Guest Bio
Dimitry Elias Léger is an award-nominated novelist whose work blends global storytelling with deeply human themes of identity, resilience, and belonging. A finalist for the PEN Open Book Award, his writing has appeared in leading publications including The New York Times, Time, Fortune, Granta, The Miami Herald, Literary Hub, and The Millions.
Before focusing on fiction, Léger built a career in international affairs, studying geopolitics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and spending a decade advising the United Nations. His work took him across regions facing political instability, humanitarian crises, and cultural transformation—experiences that now inform the emotional depth and global perspective of his novels.
Drawing inspiration from his Haitian roots and a life lived across continents, Léger splits his time between Brooklyn, Geneva, and Martinique. His books, including God Loves Haiti and Death of the Soccer God, explore the intersection of personal stories and historical forces, often set against vivid international backdrops.
Show Summary
In this episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast, host Jason Elkins speaks with Dimitry about his journey from global humanitarian work to becoming an internationally recognized novelist. Dimitry shares how his early experiences—growing up between cultures and later working with the United Nations—shaped his worldview and ultimately influenced the stories he felt compelled to tell.
The conversation dives into the origins of his first novel, inspired by his time in Haiti following the devastating 2010 earthquake. Rather than focusing solely on tragedy, Dimitry chose to explore the unexpected presence of love, humor, and human connection in the aftermath of disaster. That same lens carries into his latest work, Death of the Soccer God, a story rooted in migration, identity, and the global journey of a Haitian athlete navigating life between countries and cultures.
Along the way, Dimitry reflects on the creative process, the realities of life as a writer, and the personal sacrifices that often come with pursuing meaningful work. The episode also explores how travel, displacement, and distance from home can sharpen one’s sense of identity—and why some of the most powerful stories emerge when we are far outside our comfort zones.
Key Takeaways
- ✓ Living abroad often deepens your understanding of where you come from
- ✓ Powerful stories can emerge from tragedy when viewed through a human lens
- ✓ Travel and displacement can clarify identity and purpose
- ✓ Writing is often an isolated craft, even for naturally social people
- ✓ Creative pursuits can strain personal relationships, especially when they demand time and distance
- ✓ Historical events and personal experiences can blend into compelling fiction
- ✓ Not all success is immediate—some stories take years or decades to fully develop
- ✓ Books remain culturally significant because they offer depth and human connection beyond digital media
- ✓ Curiosity and storytelling are powerful ways to connect across cultures
- ✓ Leaving your comfort zone can lead to your most meaningful work
Learn more about God Loves Haiti & Death of the Soccer God and connect with Dimitry at:
https://www.instagram.com/dimitryleger/
Send Dimitry a Message
Send a short message through this guest feature page. Your email address will be included so they can reply directly.
No need to mention this page. They’ll see your note came through their Big World Made Small guest feature.
Message Sent
Your message has been sent.
Big World Made Small guest features are invitation-only and selected based on story, experience, and fit with the show. Guest support helps make the episode possible, but it does not determine who is featured. This helps keep the show free of third-party ads and interruptions while keeping the focus on real, story-driven conversations.
Guest access: enter your password to unlock your resources.
Incorrect password.
Guest & Partner Resources (Private)
Thank you Dimitry, for being a Podcast Guest with us.
We’d love to have you join us at the next level and get even more out of your appearance on the Big World Made Small Podcast.
Below you will find access to tools to help you promote your episode and get the most from your partnership benefits. This section is only visible when you use the link we sent, or by entering the password BWMS8873. Do not share the email we sent, or the password, unless you want the person to access the following resources.
Follow, Rate, or Provide a Testimonial
Please use this tracking link to share with your audience:
https://bigworldmadesmall.com/guest/dimitry-elias-leger/?ref=guest8873
Cover Art
This is available to all podcast guests.
Download the file to use on your website or social media posts.
Buzzsprout Audio Player
This is available to all podcast guests.
This is the best option for website embeds, especially prior to the release date. Guests can listen to your episode on your website. This player keeps listeners on your site, which is why I use it.
Use this code to embed your Buzzsprout Player directly on your website:
<div id="buzzsprout-player-18948171"></div><script src="https://www.buzzsprout.com/2216718/episodes/18948171-adventure-travel-with-dimitry-elias-leger-author-of-death-of-the-soccer-god-god-loves-haiti.js?container_id=buzzsprout-player-18948171&player=small" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>Full-Length YouTube Video Player
This is available to Base Camp, Expedition, and Summit Partners.
Upgrade to unlock these benefits.
45 Minute One-on-One Website Review
This is available to Base Camp, Expedition, and Summit Partners.
Upgrade to unlock these benefits.
Big World Made Small Podcast Pitch Portal©
This is available to Expedition & Summit Partners.
Upgrade to unlock these benefits.
All Video & Audio Files with Rights to Repurpose
This is available to Expedition and Summit Partners.
Upgrade to unlock these benefits.
45 Minute Content Strategy Session
This is available to Expedition and Summit Partners.
Upgrade to unlock these benefits.
Custom Branded Video Clips (12 clips)
This is available to Summit Partners.
Upgrade to unlock these benefits.
2 x 45 Minute Digital Marketing Strategy Sessions
This is available to Summit Partners.
Upgrade to unlock these benefits.
Review & Suggest Topic Tags
Review Episode Topics
These topic suggestions help keep this episode profile accurate and easier to find. Your suggestions will be reviewed before any changes are made.
Podcast Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated on recording, and has not been edited by a human. It may contain lots of mistakes, crazy words, and stuff that makes no sense. The host and the guest are not responsible for the accuracy of the transcript.
Jason Elkins (00:00.47)
things to mention is, you know, get yourself in a comfortable spot where you can sit for an hour or so, because if you’re, if you move around at all, it can make some noise. and also I had somebody recently that I talked to that liked to really talk with his hands and he was, you know, banging the table. And I never even thought to mention that. So I’ll mention that to you now. I’m going to incorporate that into my new, my new, script, I guess. All right. So let’s see.
Dimitry Elias Leger (00:22.71)
Noted.
Dimitry Elias Leger (00:26.958)
Free game speech. Okay.
Jason Elkins (00:30.309)
it here see if I can figure out how to okay
So if I think if you right click on my screen, on my face somewhere, it might give you the option of pop out view or full screen view. Do you see? Okay. I would do the pop out view. And then it’s going to put my face in my case, to put it years down in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. And then you can grab it and drag it up as close to your camera as possible.
Dimitry Elias Leger (00:44.814)
It does, it does.
Dimitry Elias Leger (00:56.397)
Yep.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:05.986)
It doesn’t stick. It seems to just want to be in the middle.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:12.376)
do it it seems to just wanna be in that noise seems you just want to be in one end to the other doesn’t wanna it doesn’t want to be in the middle it wants to be in the right corner or the left corner let me try again because my camera is right in the middle and doesn’t want to be there
Jason Elkins (01:20.79)
Did you se-
Jason Elkins (01:26.57)
on the okay. That’s weird.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:33.486)
He keeps, I let go and he gives, okay, let me do it right. He goes straight to the left hand corner.
Jason Elkins (01:39.82)
the top left hand corner.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:41.804)
Yes, or not a top but right hand corner. It keeps going for a corner.
Jason Elkins (01:44.588)
Okay, okay, can you click on the top of the little picture and drag it anywhere?
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:54.168)
the top. mean I’m dragging it but it goes it goes to the hot corner.
Jason Elkins (01:58.041)
really? That’s weird.
Dimitry Elias Leger (02:00.15)
I’m it. I’m dragging it. No problem. We just when I let go of the click boom it goes full corner
Jason Elkins (02:06.188)
That’s weird. Okay, so what, look at my face. That might be a little bit better. I don’t know, try it.
Dimitry Elias Leger (02:08.301)
Maybe if I make this, let me make it full screen and see what happens. Okay, let me. Okay, now I’m back, I’m in full screen and now let’s do it again. Okay, pop out view. Oh, it goes straight to the left-hand corner. Try to keep in the middle. Goes back to the left-hand corner. And it goes to right-hand corner.
Jason Elkins (02:24.748)
Okay, so do me a favor. Look at my face right now. I just wanna see where you’re, yeah, I see what you’re saying. Okay, let’s do this. Do you have the ability to move your camera to the other corner? Yeah, let’s just do that. Let’s just move the camera close to my face and then we will make adjustments as necessary.
Dimitry Elias Leger (02:39.873)
Yes I do. Yes I do.
Dimitry Elias Leger (02:49.805)
I’m gonna detach it and move it over and put it there.
Dimitry Elias Leger (03:08.234)
What about now?
Jason Elkins (03:09.644)
Okay, so you’re looking at my face now. That looks perfect. We got it. Does it look like I’m does it look like I’m looking at you? All right, cool. So I noticed though, you’re glancing down. So I don’t so but if you look at me, like right now you’re looking at me and it looks like you’re looking directly at me. So so if you Yeah, that looks perfect.
Dimitry Elias Leger (03:11.852)
Yes.
Hey, we did it.
Yes it does.
Dimitry Elias Leger (03:22.998)
Yes.
Dimitry Elias Leger (03:33.165)
Okay, it means basically I have to look at my camera. Okay.
Jason Elkins (03:36.182)
Well, aren’t you looking at my face right now?
Dimitry Elias Leger (03:38.689)
I am looking at your face, but to be able to look like I’m looking directly at you, I’m looking at the camera.
Jason Elkins (03:44.46)
OK, well, it looks.
Dimitry Elias Leger (03:45.335)
Bye-bye.
Jason Elkins (03:48.128)
But my face is pretty close to your camera, right?
Dimitry Elias Leger (03:51.201)
Your face is still lower, unfortunately.
Yeah, you’re still, you know what mean? You’re still, yeah, pop out doesn’t work. So I stopped the pop out. And then if I do this, then it’s like, okay, boom. It’s like, we’re talking, so I’m looking at you.
Jason Elkins (04:01.9)
I thought,
Jason Elkins (04:07.754)
wait but let me ask you this because I think what I heard you say is when you did the pop out it would stick in either to either corner but then you moved your camera to the corner right
Dimitry Elias Leger (04:13.389)
Here goes the hot corner.
Dimitry Elias Leger (04:18.741)
I moved the camera to the corner. It didn’t quite work because look what happens if I move the camera to the corner. Let me do this. Okay, now it’s in the left corner, now it’s in the right hand corner. Okay. Now let me do this.
Jason Elkins (04:32.876)
The goal is to get my face as close to the camera as possible. However, that whether that means move the face or move the camera.
Dimitry Elias Leger (04:40.045)
So see what happens when I move the camera to the corner. You see what I’m looking at now? You see me like, you’re seeing just my eyes and not seeing my jaw.
Jason Elkins (04:45.728)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (04:50.582)
Well, but you can move the cameras. You can move your computer screen can like up and down.
Dimitry Elias Leger (04:55.839)
I mean, yeah, could move myself like this.
Jason Elkins (04:58.048)
Well, what about your?
Dimitry Elias Leger (05:02.069)
When it’s centered, then it’s appropriate. Then it’s like, okay, cool. But now you’re in my left hand corner there.
Jason Elkins (05:03.178)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well.
Jason Elkins (05:11.308)
All right, well, I would put it in the center. mean, it’s not bad. know, most of my guests are not looking directly at the camera. So most of the clips I do that, you know, that’s kind of the way it is. I can move your head around when I edit the clip. I can move your head around. can’t change the, you know, I can’t make you look at the camera.
Dimitry Elias Leger (05:27.095)
Okay.
Dimitry Elias Leger (05:31.181)
Okay, so basically I have to keep doing this and not the…
Jason Elkins (05:35.594)
Well, yeah, you know, just periodically if you think of it, look up at the camera. mean, it’s, it’s not going to be the end of the world. I mean, because if you look, it’s up to you, if you’re comfortable having a conversation, looking at the camera, that’s great. I’m not, I’m not very good at it. I tend to want to look at your face because that’s just the way I communicate. So, but it’s up to you. But I mean, I think, I think it looks pretty good the way it is right now. The, where, wherever you’re looking right now is pretty good. And, yeah. And yeah. So, okay. All right.
Dimitry Elias Leger (05:47.618)
Okay.
Dimitry Elias Leger (05:58.285)
Alright.
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (06:05.556)
So, you feel comfortable? All right, cool, good deal. And yeah, don’t worry too much about the camera, it’s more about the conversation, right? It’s, yeah, it’s, you know.
Dimitry Elias Leger (06:07.714)
Yes.
Dimitry Elias Leger (06:13.441)
Yeah. But now I just made you full screen. So now you’re exactly where you want to be. You’re exactly underneath my camera. So now I’m looking at you directly in the eyes.
Jason Elkins (06:21.292)
Okay, cool. Okay.
Jason Elkins (06:26.252)
All right, okay, cool. that’s probably a good solution then. All right, yeah, yeah, that’s cool. All right.
Dimitry Elias Leger (06:27.757)
Do I look more normal now?
Yeah, full screen work.
Jason Elkins (06:36.844)
Oh, let’s do this. I’m gonna, here’s my plan and you tell me if it sounds right, because I can adjust it a bit, but I’m planning to introduce you as Dimitry Elias Leger. Leger? Okay. Leger. You say it slightly, but you say it lot better than I do, but Leger. Okay. Okay. So Dimitry Elias Leger. Leger. Leger, okay. Author of Death of the South.
Dimitry Elias Leger (06:46.903)
Yes, legit.
Dimitry Elias Leger (06:51.437)
You don’t need to pronounce the R at end.
Please press the right there.
Jason Elkins (07:05.772)
It’s interesting.
Dimitry Elias Leger (07:05.965)
I it doesn’t roll off the tongue at all. I was at the Pan America Awards last night. I’m not just saying, I’m not just saying soccer god at this point, but definitely the soccer god, yes.
Jason Elkins (07:14.636)
Death of the Soccer God. Death of the Soccer God. It’s funny because I’ve read it a bunch of times and then as soon as I tried to say it I was like, oh, I’ll trip over it. And I might, and I might, but we’re already recording so I just start and if I mess it up I’ll just say it again and then I’ll clip it all out. So, Demetri Elias Leje, author of Death of the Soccer God. Perfect, all right, cool. All right, that’s pretty much it. Oh.
Dimitry Elias Leger (07:20.781)
It doesn’t quite work at the time.
Dimitry Elias Leger (07:34.359)
Yes.
Jason Elkins (07:40.182)
you will have an opportunity to share whatever you need to share. So at some point in the conversation, I’ll ask you, hey, is there anything else basically? And if there is great, we can discuss it. We can keep going. we’ve, and you can just reply however you want. just want you to know that you’ll have a chance. So if you’ve got something particular you want to say, you don’t have to try and force it in somewhere. I’m not going to end the conversation and you’re going to be like, Jason, I didn’t get a chance to say this because you’ll get a chance. promise. So, all right. So let’s, let’s jump.
Do hear that sound?
There’s something outside of your apartment.
Dimitry Elias Leger (08:17.204)
A little bit of construction sounds like…
Jason Elkins (08:20.972)
You
Dimitry Elias Leger (08:23.06)
I’m in Brooklyn. I’m in New York City.
Jason Elkins (08:24.316)
well. I’m in Mexico City, so there’s a good chance one of us is going to have something happen outside.
Dimitry Elias Leger (08:32.03)
Yeah, yeah, I think it was a smidgen of construction, I think.
Jason Elkins (08:37.292)
Okay, that stuff will usually the filters will take that stuff out. I’m not not too worried about it. was just thinking if it was something we could address then great, but we can’t there’s not much we can do about that. Yeah, no, I get it. Here the garbage truck comes by some mornings and literally blares the horn so all the people know to bring out their trash and like I’m not just saying honk the horn. Don’t like sit on the horn for like a minute or two. And then a lady walks around with a bell ringing the bell and you’re like, what are these people doing? But anyway, all right.
Dimitry Elias Leger (08:42.197)
Okay.
Dimitry Elias Leger (08:46.336)
Yeah, New York City construction.
Jason Elkins (09:07.092)
So we’re gonna get started. I’m gonna say the edit, edit, edit words so I can get back to this point really easy and clip it out, edit, edit, edit. Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small podcast for the adventure traveler. So happy to have each and every one of you back here today and we’re doing something a little different today. We’ve got a wonderful guest for you. We’ve got Dimitry Elias Léger He’s the author of Death of the Soccer God. Dimitry welcome to the show. Happy to have you here.
Dimitry Elias Leger (09:36.822)
Hi Jason, great to be here.
Jason Elkins (09:38.826)
Hey, this is exciting. I mentioned that it’s something a little different today because you’re an author. You’ve written some great books. We’re gonna definitely discuss that. You’re not the typical guest that we have on the show in the sense that you’re a tour operator or necessarily a travel writer or anything like that. But when we first spoke, I dug into a little bit of your background and I thought, well, hey, that’s fascinating. So we’re gonna definitely discuss the book.
and we’re gonna discuss kind of how you got from where you are to where you are now. You’ve got a very interesting past and I think that a lot of our listeners will really enjoy hearing that. And before we do that, let’s touch on, tell me about your book, Death of the Soccer God. Give us a little bit idea what that’s all about. And then we’re gonna go back into your past and work our way back up and probably wrap up discussing the book again.
Dimitry Elias Leger (10:27.596)
Well, thanks, Jason. My first book is called God Loves Haiti. It was inspired by a trip I did to Haiti after the big earthquake in 2010. And I worked there as a humanitarian for a year. And the stories I heard and collected while working stayed with me. So I wrote a novel about a couple that survived the earthquake trying to figure out what to do next with their lives.
It’s about PTSD and it’s about love and it’s about faith. It’s about do you stay or do you leave when your country’s in trouble? While I was in Haiti working, I read an article about a little known story of a Haitian immigrant who was studying at Columbia University and playing soccer for fun at Sheepshead, Sheeps Meadow, the big park within Central Park with a bunch of immigrants and got recruited to play for the U.S. soccer team.
in the World Cup of 1950, which took place in Brazil. And I’m like, wait, I love Brazil. I love football. And I’ve been an immigrant who’s gone from Haiti to New York as a teenager to follow my studies. And now I was back in Haiti working for the UN. So it’s like, what was it like to go from Haiti to New York and then become a soccer player for the Americans and then go play in Brazil? So it to me, and then by great coincidence,
In 2014, Brazil hosted the World Cup of soccer. And then I was like, wait, sounds like I gotta go to Brazil to research this novel. The novel took place in 1950 in Brazil, but 2014, 1950 is still vibes. What are the vibes of a World Cup in Brazil like? What was my hero doing in between matches? What were the teammates doing? What happens when you watch 22 year old soccer players
Jason Elkins (12:03.445)
Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (12:25.004)
Let them loose in Brazil and better hold on to Brazil. What could they possibly do? What trouble could get into? So I went down to Brazil for three weeks during the 2014 World Cup and I record and I explored and took a lot of pictures and then I came home and I wrote a novel.
Jason Elkins (12:48.331)
So you already.
Dimitry Elias Leger (12:48.556)
And now I was called Death of the Sucker God. And just like my first book, it’s inspired by a trip I did to Brazil, among other things.
Jason Elkins (12:55.884)
And you had already decided when did you make the decision to write the book? Because I don’t know how the thought process works for authors. it you kind of just do you have a bunch of ideas in your head and you kind of explore all of them and then one just pops out or is it you make a firm decision? Okay, this is the person I want to write about. So now I need to go to Brazil to research. I need to do all this stuff. you like, was it a kind of a foregone conclusion that you were going to write this book early in the process or did it just come about later?
Dimitry Elias Leger (13:26.62)
I found my voice as a novelist April 2010, basically this week in April in 2010. I’d always wanted to write international adventure novels. I’d always wanted to write not necessarily James Bond, but Hemingway style novels about a foreigner in a foreign land, looking for dignity, looking for love, looking for valor. Those questions always mattered to me. I love Hemingway. I love Graham Greene novels as well.
Jason Elkins (13:50.528)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (13:55.92)
And they wrote novels about journalists or diplomats traveling the world and trying to do some right things and sleeping with the wrong woman. And then somehow trying to make the right things right. Even this revolution around them, this Civil War around them. There was World War II. mean, Hemingway’s novel, Farewell to Arms, my favorite novel of all time, is about a guy fighting for the Allies in World War II in Northern Italy who falls in love with his nurse after getting wounded.
Jason Elkins (14:07.285)
you
Uh-huh.
Dimitry Elias Leger (14:25.291)
and convinced the nurse to leave the war. And desertion, desertion for love. doesn’t end well. And so those novels really moved me. So was going to write these two kind of novels. And I’ve been struggling to find my voice as a novelist. April 2010, I wrote an essay in the New York Times about what it was like for me to be in Haiti as a Haitian expat 24 years after I left. 800 breezy words about danger.
Jason Elkins (14:29.408)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (14:33.26)
All right.
Jason Elkins (14:50.092)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (14:54.897)
romance, hope. It was very sweet, but the bittersweetness of it was like, this is the voice I use for a novel. Two months later, I read an article in Sports Illustrated about this Haitian soccer player who plays for the Americans, scores the game winning goal for US against England in Brazil, shocks the world, becomes super famous, meets Harry Truman, the president of United States, goes to play professional ball in Paris.
comes back to Haiti, a conquering hero, gets disappeared by a dictator.
Jason Elkins (15:28.061)
okay. wow.
Dimitry Elias Leger (15:30.805)
But when I read he got disappeared, he got picked up on the street one day and taken to a gulag, never to be seen again, dead or alive. But as nobody ever saw his dead body, I told myself, maybe he didn’t die. Maybe he escaped, like escape from Alcatraz style. Maybe he escaped and agreed to lay low and he’s running a bar in Paris or driving a cab in Miami. And that got my imagination spitting.
Jason Elkins (15:39.809)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (15:55.934)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (16:01.163)
And I was like, okay, this is a novel I was born to write. Immigrant success story, coming back and dealing with the politics and somehow finding a happy ending. So when I got home and it’s like I just checked before we spoke that my novel is still among the top 10 novels about the Caribbean ever. It’s like a must read before traveling to the Caribbean.
Jason Elkins (16:11.936)
That’s very, very cool. I love it. You’re sending chills up my spine. That’s cool.
Dimitry Elias Leger (16:27.989)
There’s a must read novel for basically every region in the world. There’s 10 for South America, 10 for Africa, 10 for Asia, 10 for Latin America, and there’s 10 for the Caribbean. that novel is still among the top 10. The novel I wrote was called God Loves Haiti, my earthquake novel. But the soccer novel was in my back burner. So after the mission, after Haiti, after I got home and recovered from my humanitarian mission, got reacquainted with my wife and kids, got some sleep for two months.
I woke up and said, no, I should write the Earthquake novel first. So I wrote the Earthquake novel in 2011, published it in 2015. It did well. But when I sold it in 2013, 2014 was the, it takes 18 months to publish a novel. So when they buy it, before it gets to the stores, 18 months. And it’s just like with movies. By the time a movie makes it to theaters, it was finished a year and a half ago.
The ramp up takes a year. The ramp up for a novel takes 18 months. So during that 18 months window, before publishing the earthquake novel, I said, what do I do now? Well, I have a little piece of change from the book deal. Let’s get back to the soccer novel. And wait, Haiti’s hosting the World Cup. Let’s go to Haiti, to Brazil. No, Brazil’s holding the World Cup. Let’s go to Brazil for three weeks to check out the vibes. My wife, bless her heart, let me go. And I spent three weeks in Brazil.
research in the book, came back, wrote 40 pages, and the plot is really a man on death row, a man on death row in the gulag in Haiti, after having offended the dictator of Haiti in the 1950s, wondering, wait, how did I go from privileged rich kid, Columbia student, soccer star in Brazil, to a gulag in Haiti?
Jason Elkins (18:24.972)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (18:26.315)
And then he tells his story. I wrote the first 20 pages about a guy on death row going, what the hell happened to me? And then I had to go on tour to promote the first book. And the promoting the first book, that tour started in January 2015. The book was so successful, it took me 10 years. It took me a world tour. I toured the world many times promoting that book. It took 10 years before that died down. And then around 2022, 2023, I said, look, let’s go back to the soccer now.
Jason Elkins (18:38.677)
Okay.
Dimitry Elias Leger (18:56.683)
I need to writing the soccer novel and I need to publish it before the next World Cup. So I wrote it, I locked myself in an Airbnb in Martinique, the Caribbean Island, in the end of 2022. And I spent two years just locked in a room or on the beach writing this book. And I finished it in early 2024, sold it to a publisher at the end of 2024. Now it’s coming out before the World Cup of 2026.
Jason Elkins (19:02.324)
Mm-hmm. Mm, yeah, okay.
Jason Elkins (19:24.94)
That’s pretty cool. we’re having this conversation. You mentioned already April and yeah, and the book’s gonna be released. You said May 12th. Okay, get that clear. All right.
Dimitry Elias Leger (19:33.009)
May 12th in exactly five weeks and the workup starts in middle of June, June 13th.
Jason Elkins (19:40.458)
Yeah, I can see why the timing would be, would be important. You said, you said so many things in there that just like, I’ve never heard. I’m not aware of as far as the turnaround time to from once you finish a book until it actually gets released. you were talking about touring around promoting the book for years. It sounds like, and I know she’d call it the earthquake book. You’ve got the earthquake book and the soccer book just to get that. I guess I want to hear a little bit more about the earthquake book as well.
Dimitry Elias Leger (20:10.09)
Hello, hello?
Jason Elkins (20:10.964)
I. Yep, I’d like to hear a little bit more about the earthquake book, if you don’t mind. What was kind of the the plot and the characters and tell us? Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (20:20.104)
No problem, no problem at all.
Dimitry Elias Leger (20:28.266)
That book is dear to my heart and it’s probably gonna be the book I’m most remembered for if I ever publish 10 other books. Because it was the book that I was in Haiti after the earthquake. I’ve been trying to write about Haiti for a long time, even though I was born in Haiti, but I grew up in New York City and I lived in Switzerland for 20 years. So while in Switzerland, I had a two-year-old son. Once my son was born, I was like, okay, I gotta write a book.
So he knows his dad had more than fun travels for his life. He cared about some things and had a vision of the world that I wanted to share. But it’s getting my sense of humor. Haitians have a huge sense of humor. And it’s one of those weirdest thing. It’s lots of dark comedies, obviously, because the country has been terribly poor and unstable since its founding.
Jason Elkins (21:00.982)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (21:06.188)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (21:23.314)
and by the sense before his founding, but since his founding has been terribly poor and unstable, yet very proud and very resilient. Now, the resilience can be explored in many different ways. Some of my favorite writers explore resilience in war times with great drama and with great sadness. I decided my way would be through romance.
Jason Elkins (21:50.529)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (21:51.371)
I experienced what makes us, what keeps us out of bed. What gets us out of bed? I decided that focus on romance as one of the drivers that keeps us out of bed, even when we broke, even when we’re scared, even when we’re traumatized. And when I was in Haiti after the earthquake in 2010, after being away for 24 years, I saw signs of romance after a couple of months. I saw couples holding hands. I saw a wedding in a refugee camp. Three million people.
Jason Elkins (21:59.489)
Hmm.
Jason Elkins (22:04.364)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (22:13.59)
Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (22:19.496)
The city was destroyed. Three million people lived in refugee camps in the middle of the city. 200,000 people died. And I helped bury all 200,000 people. But in the middle of that burial, in the middle of all that grief, I saw people fall in love. And I thought, this is a novel. My novel will be about how humor and romance exists in spaces that are tragic.
Jason Elkins (22:46.314)
We don’t even like, I can’t speak for everybody, but I don’t even think about that when I think about the Haiti earthquake or other large traumatic events that have happened in the world. You think of, you know, things that happened during World War II or there’s, there’s so many things, things that are happening in parts of Africa right now. Yeah. It doesn’t even occur to me to think about the romance. just, you just look at it. It’s just pure survival. Nothing else is happening there. They’re just.
trying to survive. That’s an interesting angle and
Dimitry Elias Leger (23:19.828)
And it’s worth exploring because fortunately great writers and great artists have been writing about war and death since literature was invented. The first ever long poem, well the first ever novel is the Odyssey about a man leaving Ithaca, his island in Greece to go fight a war. Odysseus leaves his wife and kid, Penelope and his son to go fight a war across
Jason Elkins (23:26.57)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (23:36.746)
Mm-hmm. Okay.
Dimitry Elias Leger (23:48.683)
the Mediterranean for Greece and stays fighting for 10 years and then comes back home and discovers that his wife had changed, his family had changed, has picked up the pieces. That’s like the first novel ever. Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey. And The Odyssey is such a canonical and foundational story that it’s gonna be a movie this summer by Christopher Nolan, the same director who did Oppenheimer.
Jason Elkins (24:00.542)
you
Great.
Jason Elkins (24:13.515)
Okay.
Hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (24:17.396)
So looking at how people handle family and war has been going around since Homer and the Odyssey, Shakespeare picked up on it. All Shakespeare’s novels are basically about kings trying to get laid through war and through peace and through, and fast forward to the 21st century, some of the greatest books ever and movies were made about World War II.
Jason Elkins (24:32.586)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (24:46.326)
And one of the greatest, The English Patient, written by a novel, it’s based on a novel by writer named Michael Ndaje, who’s Sri Lankan but lives in Canada and was a poet by training. But he wrote this amazing novel about adultery during World War II in the Sahara. And Graham Greene wrote amazing novels about adultery in Haiti, in Panama.
Jason Elkins (25:07.987)
Mm Okay.
Dimitry Elias Leger (25:15.814)
in Vietnam. For some reason, they’re cheating bastards wherever you go. And by coincidence, a lot of these writers were Catholic and a lot of Catholic literature from Dante, his Divine Comedy, all the way through Graham Greene and all the way through my books and other books by Haitian writers. At the core, Catholic tests, Catholic writers exploring the Catholic issues, which is
Jason Elkins (25:20.236)
Yep.
Dimitry Elias Leger (25:45.566)
family betrayal, redemption. So there’s a long tradition of this and I just joined that tradition. So God Loves Haiti is about a woman torn between her husband, who happens to be the president of Haiti, and her lover, who happens to be a young, ambitious guy her age. But after the earthquake, the president, the husband, who she didn’t respect much, grows some balls, and the young guy that she loved, she can’t find him. She doesn’t know if he survived or not.
Jason Elkins (25:48.971)
Right.
Dimitry Elias Leger (26:14.643)
So she’s wracked with guilt. So she travels for her parents in the wreckage of her parents trying to find the guy she loved and in the process finds herself.
But does she want to live Haiti? Does she want to leave Haiti? Does she want to leave Haiti? Does she want to get back to her Catholic roots? Or does she want to be a daughter to his wife? Does she want to love her husband or leave her husband? Suppose this guy’s alive. she really… Dealing with those questions, a way to stay or to leave, and what is the honorable thing to do after surviving a tragedy? That’s what God Loves Haiti is about. But it’s a comedy because…
Jason Elkins (26:51.008)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (26:55.473)
It is about a daughterless woman trying to find Anita in a haystack, the guy that she thinks she killed, whose heart she broke. And the novel goes between different chapters, one by her, one from the perspective of her husband, who doesn’t know she’s been cheating on him, but slowly fixes out, and one chapter about her lover, who thinks she’s dead and who’s depressed, because he’s hurt from the earthquake, physically hurt, and he’s like, why do I have to live?
Jason Elkins (27:22.209)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (27:24.905)
human being a stud before the earthquake to being a depressed wounded guy after the earthquake. so that’s novel about three people who survived this thing, whose morale is in different places after the thing and where are they going to end up? Are they going to end up with each other or separately or not?
So that looking for how love can operate in a war setting, in a denational disaster setting, which is what I do in that novel, has been done before, has been done by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the great Colombian writer who has lived in Mexico City when he wrote his great novel, including 100 Years of Solitude.
Jason Elkins (28:01.996)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
He lived in Mexico City at that time? I didn’t even know that. I I’ve spent a lot of time in Columbia. I’ve read in Spanish some of his works, and it’s not easy. I’ve been told it’s not the easiest books to read if you’re practicing Spanish, I did not know that. Okay, all right, that’s interesting.
Dimitry Elias Leger (28:09.192)
Yes, most of his life he lived in cool city.
Dimitry Elias Leger (28:28.521)
I don’t know, when he became huge, he was too big for Columbia. So like many writers, his refuge was another country. So he lived in Mexico City. And many people do that. Hemingway never lived in New York. He lived in Spain, he’s been in France, and he lives in Cuba.
Jason Elkins (28:31.564)
okay.
That’s interesting.
Jason Elkins (28:45.27)
Let’s discuss that. That’s an interesting concept I hadn’t thought about, but I heard you say that you were in Martinique for two years.
Dimitry Elias Leger (28:53.641)
Yes, I let myself in Airbnb in Martinique to write the soccer novel because the Haiti novel came out in 2015. It was popular. I made the rounds and I published very late. I published a novel at 45. So I’m a very late bloomer. So I’m thinking I’m a one hit wonder. I’m just going to write this out. As long somebody asks me to do press, I’m doing press. A bookstore wants me to come, I’ll come and talk. I just was going to milk it till people stop inviting me.
Jason Elkins (29:10.572)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (29:16.126)
Yeah
All right
Dimitry Elias Leger (29:23.689)
I was a one hit wonder and plus I got a new appreciation of life from doing humanitarian work and seeing the death and suffering in countries like Haiti after the earthquake. Because since then I worked in Africa quite extensively in the Middle East. I’ve seen a lot of things and I wanted to share the message that know, copy DM.
Jason Elkins (29:30.678)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (29:36.203)
Right.
Jason Elkins (29:41.504)
Before we’re going to go into a lot of the stuff you just touched on, but if you don’t mind, I would like to stick on the part of, you know, why Marquez would be in Mexico city or why you, why you were in Martinique or why Hemingway was in Cuba. Is there something about changing your, your environment, living closer to your subject? Why, why does so many writers go somewhere completely culturally different to immerse themselves while they write a book and
Dimitry Elias Leger (29:52.425)
Oh yeah, my writers.
Dimitry Elias Leger (29:57.203)
Yeah, no problem.
Jason Elkins (30:10.814)
Is it norm typically? Yeah, I have no idea. Tell me.
Dimitry Elias Leger (30:14.793)
Jason, it’s a great question. It’s a great question looking back at the history of literature and again about my experiences. It’s traditional. Dante wrote the Divine Comedy while in exile in Northern Italy, Dante is famously from Florence and in the Middle Ages, was, Florence lost the war with Rome or something. So him and his political party were exiled. To me not.
why I’m not he was pining for Florence. So he wrote a long poem about how other people who kicked him out of Florence should be in hell or purgatory. And heaven is reuniting with the love of his life who’s on Florence Beatrice. And he created he was the first book that described what heaven and purgatory could be like and what hell could be like and his images in fiction of how the greedy.
Jason Elkins (31:01.932)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (31:13.115)
And his depiction of hell and purgatory became, lasted for centuries. Pictures and movies that show hell and heaven, he invented this. And he wrote that in like 1077, and he wrote it in exile. So homesickness may be one of those things that’s at the root of many great works. I write about Haiti. I lived in Haiti for about five years from the ages.
Jason Elkins (31:21.024)
Right. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (31:26.796)
Hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (31:42.921)
60 from ages 8 to 14. But I’m only writing about Haitians because I find I find their existence fascinating because they live 100 miles from America. Poest country in the world next to the richest country in the world. have intimate relationships between America and the US. Nothing happens in Haiti that that Washington does not decide. Not for hundreds of years, and yet we’ve grown richer. He’s one poor.
And how do you handle that? And I find that fascinating, even though I wrote the first book in Switzerland. And then the second book, I got the inspiration and I had the free time. And I was like, okay, I’m finally going to get it done. I was in Martinique for a book festival for the first book. And the welcome in Martinique was so nice. The people loved the first book so much. I’m like, you know what? You guys deserve a second book.
I’m gonna write a second book just for you guys, because you loved the first book so much. I’m gonna get over my writer’s block. I’m gonna stop being a one-hit wonder. I’m gonna get this Airbnb and stay and write a new book.
Jason Elkins (32:51.988)
Okay. I don’t know if we want it. I don’t know how far you want to go into your personal life, but early earlier I heard you say you went to Brazil for a few weeks and you specifically mentioned my wife said I could go or let me go or something like that. It’s one thing to take off for three weeks and go to Brazil to research a book. What, how, how, you know, you know where I’m going with this.
Dimitry Elias Leger (32:56.391)
I don’t mind.
Dimitry Elias Leger (33:08.809)
Yes, needless to say the first book was not really helpful to my marriage. Those three weeks in Brazil, she let me go and when I came back she was like, you suck. You left me alone with the two kids.
Jason Elkins (33:27.82)
okay. This is a warning to all just people. It goes both ways. But yeah, when your partner says, yeah, sure, baby, go for three weeks. Have fun. That it doesn’t always mean that’s what they’re thinking, right?
Dimitry Elias Leger (33:40.499)
Yes, yes, yes!
Dimitry Elias Leger (33:46.415)
No, no, no. And plus there’s gonna be buyer’s remorse or philanthropist remorse or lover’s remorse. She let me go to Haiti for three months after the earthquake. Within two weeks, she was like, dude, the kids are killing me here. I’m like, I’m burying 20,000 people here and I live in a tent. Yeah, but you’re in the Caribbean. I’m stuck here with the two
Jason Elkins (33:55.638)
Well, yeah.
Jason Elkins (33:59.616)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (34:09.297)
Yeah, yeah. So that became a recurring theme. of course, you do, then you can continue publish a book and it’s really about you. Books are not collaborative like movies are and music is. Like many of the other arts are. The performing arts, there’s a practice session. People, your partner, your lovers can see you practice. They can come to the set of your movie.
Jason Elkins (34:10.39)
Hi.
So I’ve got, go ahead.
Jason Elkins (34:25.248)
Mmm.
Jason Elkins (34:33.536)
Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (34:36.532)
and share an opinion. They can come to your atelier and see your painting and be like, you’re using a of red this time around. They feel like they’re part of the process. A novel, not so much. And that also can be alienating.
Jason Elkins (34:43.531)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (34:49.004)
A novel is much more like, yeah, it, I don’t know, but it feels like, okay, leave me alone. I’m right. I’m working on my novel and you’re in a room somewhere or a different country or an Airbnb. Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (35:01.404)
You’re in the basement. You’re in the basement. Everyone goes to sleep. I wrote that first book between 11 PM and six in the morning. When the wife and kids went to sleep on Friday nights and Saturday nights, 11 PM, six AM at six AM on Saturday mornings, my son gets up to go pee. He was about six or eight at the time. I’m like, that’s my time to go to bed. Could I go to bed? The wife would wake up and take them skiing all day Saturday. I sleep all day.
Revised, they come home from skiing. We have dinner. We watch a movie. They go to bed. 11 p.m. Saturday night, I go back to work. And from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Jason Elkins (35:39.276)
You don’t sound like a fun husband during that stage. I’m not knocking you. It’s what you do, right? Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (35:45.699)
It’s well actually many husbands have hobbies. you know, they’re in the garage tinkering on a, you know, mail on it making an amore. People have hobbies. And at the time I had a regular day job. I was at the UN. So that’s Demetri spending all night working on his novel. That’s so cute. that’s the Midnight Crisis happening. But lo and behold, it was good. Lo and behold, I found a great publisher.
Jason Elkins (35:55.447)
huh. Yeah, yeah.
Jason Elkins (36:05.548)
Uh-huh. All right.
Dimitry Elias Leger (36:13.799)
And lo and behold, audiences liked it. And that was a game changer. Suddenly the little hobby became this other thing. And suddenly it’s like, I didn’t sign up for this. And I’m sitting there like, this is my dream come true. I’ll hit the lottery.
Jason Elkins (36:16.032)
Yeah, yeah.
Jason Elkins (36:24.108)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (36:27.774)
Mm-hmm. And she wasn’t, she wasn’t having it. Yeah. Is that a common thing with writers to have relationship issues? Cause everything you just described, I’m like, yeah, I can, I can see some possible, issues.
Dimitry Elias Leger (36:29.564)
Turns out, not uncommon.
Dimitry Elias Leger (36:44.892)
There isn’t. Hemingway had four wives.
Jason Elkins (36:47.23)
Well, yeah, just yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (36:49.672)
Green and Green had a thousand mistresses. Fitzgerald had one wife who hated him his fame. We drove him to drink and suicide. Well, drink by suicide. Suicide by drinking. It’s not a collaborative art. It’s not even that remunerative, but it’s quite rewarding because you telling jokes to yourself.
Four hours on end. And I’m a fast writer. Like I wrote the first book in about a year, like 10 months. I had a wife and two kids. I couldn’t be dicking around for years. The second one, I dicked around for 10 years. Because I was in no hurry. I already did my magnum opus. But then when it’s time to brass tacks to write it, I got that Airbnb. I was freshly divorced. And I wrote a little bit on a beach. And within a year was done.
Jason Elkins (37:30.911)
you
Jason Elkins (37:35.148)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (37:41.056)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (37:49.196)
Okay. And do you think, so let’s, what I heard you earlier say was a lot of writers will write in either exile or somewhere. You mentioned the term homesickness. And, and when you said that, so I’ve been traveling full time for four and a half years, I’m doing this digital nomad thing. And one of the,
Dimitry Elias Leger (37:50.534)
wish my year was done.
Dimitry Elias Leger (38:02.492)
Mmm.
Jason Elkins (38:14.38)
Probably my biggest problem to solve at this point in my life is a potential isolation as part of why I do the podcast so I can connect with people, have conversations. Ooh, that’s interesting actually. I’m, I’m going through this stuff in my head, but the, but the point is there’s that isolation, that loneliness, that discomfort of being in a place that maybe is fascinating and people think, you’re so lucky to be there, but there’s always that discomfort.
And I’m, I’m sensing that maybe it’s that discomfort, that isolation, that loneliness, that kind of maybe torments the brain a little bit. I don’t know if torments the right word and I’m not trying to put words in your mouth. Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (38:56.776)
don’t want to say torment. What I would say is when you’re out of your element, when you’re in a foreign country especially, or out of your hometown, it’s very common to find your purpose. Like, why am I here? The question became more acute to me when I lived in Switzerland. I lived in the of Switzerland, in heart of Europe, running a European family with this very international community.
But what’s the point? What’s the point? What’s the point of me? And that question is less acute in your hometown, because in your hometown, your family or old friends are always reminding you who you are. You went to this high school. Yeah, you went to this high school. You’re the son of, you’re the daughter of. Your cousins are definitely reminding you, your siblings are always reminding you, too. You’re my kid brother, no more, no less.
Jason Elkins (39:28.256)
Yeah, yeah.
Jason Elkins (39:39.756)
who they think you are. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (39:52.128)
Yep. Yep.
Dimitry Elias Leger (39:52.872)
And your family does that. They do this check and they check you in that regard. But when you’re out of your element, there’s no check. You get to reinvent yourself. But it just so happens along the way, you also look at what’s good about where you came from. What’s worth keeping? What from your hometown? What are the things from your family, from your dad and your granddad and your ancestors and their journey?
Jason Elkins (40:08.31)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Ooh.
Dimitry Elias Leger (40:18.631)
And especially if we’re American, most Americans can trace their roots to some other country. So what did your ancestors bring to you that you used to carry with you? And when you’re out and about, what about those things are you carrying with you? Like, turns out I had a concierge tell me this, a Haitian guy in a building I lived in in Miami at one point, and we used to chat in French. And he’s like, at the time, he’s like, your French sucks. Like, why? Because you sound like a New Yorker.
Jason Elkins (40:23.072)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (40:44.372)
You
Dimitry Elias Leger (40:46.791)
So turns out whatever language I speak, I speak like a New Yorker. I speak fast, I cut off the end of my words, I curse, and you can’t stop being a New Yorker. So over the years you travel around, I pick up all these other languages, I pick up new accents, I get better with my accents, I’m still a New Yorker.
Jason Elkins (40:49.718)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (40:54.495)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (41:04.15)
But everywhere you go, everybody knows you’re a New Yorker on some level.
Dimitry Elias Leger (41:07.495)
You walk into a room, you look people in the eye, oh shit, you must be a New Yorker. And you become more of a New Yorker the further you live away from New York, I found. I became more Haitian the further I lived away from America and the Caribbean. I was like, oh man, you know what? My country is not so bad. Haiti’s 10 million people, Switzerland’s 10 million people, Sweden’s 10 million people. They’re proud, we have reasons to be proud.
Jason Elkins (41:11.628)
Yeah,
Jason Elkins (41:22.444)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (41:30.997)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (41:34.791)
Everybody in Europe would be like, well, America is so racist. But no, no, Obama is president. Calm down. Where’s your Obama? Where’s your Obama? You don’t have an Obama. And you’ve been around longer than the US. Oh yeah, but now it’s like Trump. Obama still happened. Marita King still happened. Where’s your Marita King? Where’s your Obama? Where’s your Bob Marley? And Jamaicans could always hang their hat on that. Nobody unifies the world more than Bob Marley’s music.
Jason Elkins (41:42.368)
Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Jason Elkins (41:56.982)
Yeah. Yep, yep.
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (42:05.8)
And he lived a very brief life. So I started to appreciate a lot of things about the Caribbean, about America, that boldness, that adventurousness, the polyglotness, the multiculturalism, the constant struggle. You know, now the Nazis are in charge, but before that, you know, Luke Skywalker was in charge. A little flip-flop again, but we do these things. I became appreciative of America and the Caribbean.
Jason Elkins (42:21.451)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (42:35.185)
the longer I lived in Switzerland.
Jason Elkins (42:39.287)
That’s a very interesting thing that these are kind of thoughts that have been rolling around in my head, but I haven’t been able to formulate them. So it’s such a pleasure to chat with you that you’ve got this way with words and describing. I do. Yeah. I’ve got a 19 year old son and a 29 year old daughter.
Dimitry Elias Leger (42:51.633)
Do you have kids?
Dimitry Elias Leger (42:58.567)
I have a 20 year old daughter and a 24 year old son. So our kids are about the same age. another thing too, my son was born in 2002. I had just about turned 30 and I was like, is my legacy gonna be Demetri had a cool resume and a lot of passport stamps? Or is my legacy gonna be a body of work that tells him this is what I love? This is who I am. You get to decide who you are. I wrote God Loves Haiti. It’s an absurd title.
Jason Elkins (43:01.184)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (43:20.46)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (43:27.971)
It’s a head-scratcher title, but I did that. Because you’re to hear about Haiti from the headlines, from your colleagues, from your friends, and you’re really going to hear anything good about Haiti. Well, you know what? Turns out there are good things about Haiti. Turns out I had a good time there. Turns out my parents met and had me there. And that must have been a love story. That must have been a nice love story. Turns out the population of Haiti went from 6 million when I was a kid to 10 million in 2020.
Jason Elkins (43:31.681)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (43:46.828)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (43:57.132)
Hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (43:58.152)
people who are having sex, people who are having babies and growing families. So the longer I lived abroad, the more I’m kids like in Switzerland who are not Swiss. None of us was Swiss, but I’m raising kids far away from their roots, far away from my roots. I felt like I had to give them a sense of my roots that they could take with them. They could read and explore where I’m alive and when I’m
Jason Elkins (44:12.246)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (44:28.874)
get it. I love that you asked if I had kids and then you were sharing that and I was reflecting on, it might sound cheesy to people. Like I’ve got people in my family that you mentioned your ex-wife was kind of like, he’s doing his novel thing. Sometimes in my mind, my friends and family think, Jason is doing his podcast thing, you know, and they don’t understand maybe why I’m doing it. Sometimes I don’t even understand why I’m doing it.
Dimitry Elias Leger (44:30.225)
Purpose.
Jason Elkins (44:59.072)
But when I reflect on my kids, like, I love the idea that my son would sit there and listen to these episodes. I don’t think he does. He’s 19. He’s got a lot of things on his mind. Girls work, whatever. But I’ve always appreciated the fact that at some point I’m going to have this long series of conversations with people that I respect, I admire, I feel like a connection with. And the idea of my kids going back and listening to these episodes.
Dimitry Elias Leger (45:21.767)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (45:28.616)
And seeing, dad was like talking to cool people. Dad was talking to interesting people, having interesting conversations. He helped people bring out their stories. And then the guests on the show, yeah, you know? And so I get that. Yeah, I get that. Yeah. As opposed to, you know, I do some website design stuff that I enjoy, but you know what? I could build a beautiful website and…
Dimitry Elias Leger (45:33.115)
Yeah? Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (45:39.249)
He cared! He was curious! He cared! He gave people their voices! He helped others!
Jason Elkins (45:56.478)
And then if, you know, in a couple of years, somebody else gets hired to replace and update the website and it’s gone. But these, these conversations will be there forever. And I’m going to, you know, I can do everything I can to make sure they’re there forever. so I get that. Yeah. That’s a big. Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (46:01.425)
to improve it, yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (46:09.767)
Yes. That’s the beauty about the media. I was a journalist and I was a journalist and joined as a major and undergrad at St. John’s University here in Queens. And then I became a journalist very early on, publishing in national magazines, writing about music and then eventually writing about the tech world. And I remember when I went to grad school to get into international relations and to get into humanitarianism, I was being recruited by the government quite a bit because I went to a school of government.
Jason Elkins (46:15.596)
Hmm?
Dimitry Elias Leger (46:38.544)
for masters in public administration, the government agencies were like, okay, we want you to come work in our communications department, work in our media department, help us work in our intelligence department, help us get information and help advance the country’s goals. And I was like, I already have a wife and kid. I think grad school very late. So I’m I’m used to doing a public facing career.
Jason Elkins (47:02.55)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (47:07.814)
As a journalist, I publish regularly and my kids can read it and my friends know what I do for a living. If I’m in the government doing intelligence work, no one knows what I’m doing.
Jason Elkins (47:13.045)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (47:17.802)
And you’re not really supposed to tell anyone what you’re doing. Yeah. huh.
Dimitry Elias Leger (47:21.798)
I’m lying left and right. It’s too late. If I’m 22, the idea of that kind of obscurity works. At 32, no, I want to share my ideas with the world and with my kids and my family to be proud of what I do. And so going to so there’s something about being in the media and producing public facing work that’s rewarding and that’s going to last and that’s enduring. from journalists to novelists, I found to be great fun because
Jason Elkins (47:28.008)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (47:35.146)
Yeah, yeah, I get.
Dimitry Elias Leger (47:51.302)
A journalist, you’re not supposed to be funny, but a novelist, you can make fun about adultery. You can make fun about death. You can make fun about how people grieve. You can make fun about how people have sex. You can make fun about how people fall in love, how people fall out of love. You could actually make fun of stuff that’s painful, but that people can recognize themselves in.
Jason Elkins (47:55.082)
Right?
Jason Elkins (48:15.5)
Yeah, I get that. Yeah, I have a personality question. You’ve probably thought of it about it more than I have, or maybe not. Maybe it’s not even relevant. But when I think of journalists, people that go into journalism school, and I don’t know, I might be wrong. Because you mentioned front facing, public facing, and I’m thinking those are people that kind of like to be, I don’t know, maybe like to be in the spotlight. What’s that? Yeah, OK.
Dimitry Elias Leger (48:40.774)
The extroverts! The extroverts! The extroverts!
Jason Elkins (48:44.138)
That’s exactly where I was going with that. But then I think of novelists, like just before I had this conversation with you, I think of a novelist, I think of an extreme introvert. So how does that work? Tell me more.
Dimitry Elias Leger (48:53.808)
Yes. Yes. It.
I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m winging it. The people who were close to me could better answer that. My wife and girlfriends could better answer that.
Jason Elkins (49:04.501)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (49:15.82)
They’re going to be on the next episode. don’t know if we told you that we’re doing a surprise episode. Demetri’s lovers.
Dimitry Elias Leger (49:20.87)
Going from extreme social, because people are going from extreme social to extreme hermit. It’s kind of a bit of a whiplash. It’s whiplash and you have to have both sides of personality. I’ve been, it’s been lent. It’s Catholic season, it’s lent, it’s Holy Week, Easter, it’s Sunday. During Holy Week, doing lent, 40 days, it’s just like Ramadan, 40 days of no partying, no booze, no sex, no well. But 40 days of.
Jason Elkins (49:38.444)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (49:49.964)
No drink no drinking
Dimitry Elias Leger (49:50.769)
penance, a reflection and no parting. And holy week, no sex. have a friend, Marcy Neagle told me his wife is like, dude, not this week. And he’s like, wow. Exactly. But I find lent to be a great period to lock into my work. Lock into your work and having a partner with who understands is tricky, man.
Jason Elkins (50:01.068)
And he’s, again, that’s what you said last week.
Jason Elkins (50:11.18)
Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (50:19.687)
It’s tricky. And you write, and I’m writing about people who are in my past, people I miss, the ideas of adventures that I never had, but there are reflection adventures that I’ve wondered about through time. I’m never writing about where I am and the people I’m with. And they all want that. They want that.
Jason Elkins (50:24.95)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (50:46.188)
They want that. They want you to write about them. Really? interesting.
Dimitry Elias Leger (50:48.922)
They want that. my God. A woman will sleep with you and hope that you end up in your novel.
Jason Elkins (50:55.724)
Okay, I shouldn’t say this, but I think I just came up with a new hobby. All right. Writing novels, writing novels, that is.
Dimitry Elias Leger (51:02.246)
There’s nothing fun about writing novels. There’s nothing fun about the industry of making a living off novels. But there is fun about having a novel in a bookstore.
Jason Elkins (51:17.776)
yeah, I can, because I heard someone say there’s the difference between a writer and an author has something, and I don’t know, I might’ve got this quote wrong, but an author has something in a bookstore type of thing. Is that a common thought? Okay.
Dimitry Elias Leger (51:31.462)
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, more books have been published and written in the last 10 years since the internet. Um, then the history of man, but the percentage that ends up in bookstores is like 1%. The percent and the book industry is a very large industry. It’s like $130 billion projected to grow to 180 billion in the next 10 years. People read books. Bookstores are thriving.
Jason Elkins (51:46.718)
Okay, that’s.
Jason Elkins (51:57.803)
Let’s talk.
Dimitry Elias Leger (52:00.762)
But the percentage of what’s written and what ends up in bookstores is like minuscule. It’s like with music. People are recording music left and right now on their laptops. But the percentage that ends up on Spotify? Minuscule.
Jason Elkins (52:05.291)
Okay.
Jason Elkins (52:12.232)
Mm-hmm. Right.
Jason Elkins (52:18.38)
Help what you said about the book industry growing the bookstore is doing well. It feels a little counterintuitive to me. You’re much closer to it. I suspect it sounds counterintuitive. A lot of people listening because we know what happened to newspapers and magazines. So what’s the difference?
Dimitry Elias Leger (52:36.195)
Yes, but they provided a temporary jolt of culture, while books provided an enduring form of culture. So one thing that’s grown in the last 20 years, as the internet has devoured most media, museum attendance has grown. The Louvre, the Met, MoMA, thriving, thriving. The Louvre is so popular, they opened a Louvre Abu Dhabi.
Jason Elkins (52:53.76)
Really? well, okay.
Dimitry Elias Leger (53:04.175)
They open like a Guggenheim in Spain. Like museums are thriving.
Jason Elkins (53:09.544)
Is that because people post social media photos of themselves standing in the courtyard at the Louvre? Or why is that?
Dimitry Elias Leger (53:17.029)
I think while people have been moving a lot of their lives online, the people offline have been extremely offline. So museums have become more popular. mean, Taylor Swift and Beyonce made billion dollars on their last tours. No one did that before. Why people go into concerts?
Jason Elkins (53:40.3)
Okay, connect.
Dimitry Elias Leger (53:40.485)
Why are you going to concerts when concert tickets cost two grand, three grand now to go see Taylor Swift? tickets are extremely expensive. People go. The NFL, college football, 100,000 people stadiums. Why? When you can do everything in your comfort or your living room. There’s a nice yin yang going on between the online life and offline life. So bookstores are thriving. There are great photo ops.
They’re great ways for the evening. They’re a great place for moms, dad home moms to bring their kids to hang out.
Jason Elkins (54:14.284)
I get it, I think.
Dimitry Elias Leger (54:14.302)
And one thing authors can give you that AI can’t give you is the backstory. An AI novel does not have a backstory. A self-published novel does not have the same… Self-published writers don’t end up in bookstores. There’s enough published writers for bookstore to have a different book signing every night. So you won’t meet them in person. While somebody who’s never been to Haiti, who’s not even Catholic, they read my book.
Jason Elkins (54:37.068)
Okay, I got it.
Dimitry Elias Leger (54:43.023)
they were moved by it. I’m signing books in their town. They want to come and be like, dude, really? Why, you write so well about women and adultery. How did that, I mean, how did your wife react to that? Well, not well.
Jason Elkins (54:51.041)
get it.
Jason Elkins (55:02.892)
Yeah. Yeah. You mean my ex-wife? She finally found out what I was doing at 11 o’clock at night, every Friday night, writing about adultery. Right. Okay. All right. That’s interesting. And, and as you described that, I’m like, yeah, I’ve always thought bookstores were a cool place to just go hang out. I’ve probably spent more time than I feel good about sitting in bookstores and reading books and not always.
Dimitry Elias Leger (55:08.399)
Dimitry Elias Leger (55:13.285)
So a computer won’t have a backstory to their number.
Jason Elkins (55:32.534)
Hang on.
Dimitry Elias Leger (55:33.961)
I at schools. I’ve been speaking at schools around the world since, you for more than 10 years now. Whenever I go speak to a class, and at many grades too, ninth grade to 12th grade, university, teachers always prep the class by having them read a chapter of my book. Inevitably I show up, and this has been in like the ghetto, this has been in the Sahara, and when I show up and pass private schools. Of the 30 kids in the class, five will have read the entire book, not just a chapter.
Jason Elkins (55:48.128)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (55:57.931)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (56:02.852)
OK. Yeah, that’s good. I think that sounds great, right?
Dimitry Elias Leger (56:06.406)
And whenever I see these five kids, I’m like, oh, I was you when I was 14. I would have been one of those five kids. So in any group of 30 kids, there’s five who love print, who love to read, who could actually put away their phone and read a book from beginning to end and feel good about it. And those five kids out of 30 have existed since the dawn of time. The people who are capable of lock in and read the entire book.
Jason Elkins (56:19.105)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (56:32.224)
Yeah, OK.
Dimitry Elias Leger (56:36.421)
or lock in and go to a museum and actually paint and people will appreciate painting. Because writers are just reflection of readers and there’s a million, there’s like a billion readers out there. Those five kids out of 30 grow up to be adults who become five out of 30 who do book clubs.
Jason Elkins (56:41.11)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (56:53.9)
And you know, I don’t know what it’s like. It’s been a while since I’ve been in New York City, but I’ve spent a lot of time in some other cities and other parts of the world. And you can see those, those five out of 30, when you get on the Metro, there’s that, there’s that person, there’s everybody else is on their phone. And there’s that one person standing up with a backpack on a bag of groceries wrapped over their arm. And they’re sitting there reading a book.
Dimitry Elias Leger (57:07.034)
Yes.
Dimitry Elias Leger (57:20.491)
neck deep in a book.
Jason Elkins (57:23.34)
And it’s like, oh, that person’s a little different and not in a bad way. Like in a really good way. I grew up with my, my dad’s a reader. I’m a reader and shouldn’t, shouldn’t. Yeah. I shouldn’t say this, but, but he used to drive down the freeway. Like back in the day when we were young, you know, my brother and I were probably, I don’t know, 11, 12, 10 years old, whatever.
Dimitry Elias Leger (57:33.549)
My dad was a big reader too.
Dimitry Elias Leger (57:45.678)
West City.
Jason Elkins (57:46.604)
in the back of the pickup truck. This was just across the country. We just traveled, we traveled across the states. He was a balloon pilot. We would go from town to town for balloon festivals on the weekends, but he would be driving down the freeway, reading, you know, with my brother and I in the probably in the back of the truck, of course, not strapped it like in the back of the pickup truck, you know, 75 miles an hour down the interstate through Kansas.
Dimitry Elias Leger (57:48.419)
In the Midwest? Yeah.
Jason Elkins (58:12.22)
and he’d be sitting there with a book reading the book as he was driving. And it was, just, that’s a mem- Yeah. I know. And now we’re like, I mean, I get it. But like, if I, like, if my son sees me glance at my phone, if he’s in the car with me and I glance at my phone, like looking at the map.
Dimitry Elias Leger (58:19.532)
it.
with Texan Drive, I read a couple of chapter chapters.
Dimitry Elias Leger (58:36.898)
Yeah, mine too.
Jason Elkins (58:38.474)
You know, they’re like, quit looking at your phone, quit looking at your phone. And I’m like, you have no idea what it was like when I was growing up with my, you know, he might’ve even had a drink between his legs sometimes. You know, it’s,
Dimitry Elias Leger (58:41.558)
Mine too. Mine too.
Dimitry Elias Leger (58:49.412)
Yeah, so avid readers exist. Last night I went to the Pan America Literary Awards, like the Oscars for books, and it was packed. Everybody was dressed and beautiful, and the winners all were people who wrote books or translated books in countries, about countries that they’re not even from. And like one guy who won a translated award for a novel set in
Jason Elkins (58:57.782)
Huh?
Jason Elkins (59:13.233)
really?
Dimitry Elias Leger (59:19.85)
and Tina and he’s clearly from Iowa. You saw that a lot. It’s in the culture of people who are curious, who travel, to want to connect with the people locally and either get their stories out by translation or write their stories. And that’s been going on for a long time.
Jason Elkins (59:39.958)
We, when you say get their stories out, you’re talking a little bit about translation and it’s not my, haven’t really considered.
Dimitry Elias Leger (59:48.388)
No, it’s translation. I mean, you can even take it a step further. My next novel is going to be set in Zurich. It’s going to about a Swiss banker. Private banker who’s not Swiss was running a Swiss bank.
Because the idea of somebody who’s not Swiss running a Swiss bank lends itself to so much comedy.
Jason Elkins (01:00:08.588)
I can kind of imagine.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:00:09.931)
And that kind of disconnect exists in order and across the world. Whenever I’m trying to get a job, I do corporate comms on the side. It’s like, I’m always a fish out of water. And because I’m permanently a fish out of water, I’m permanently seeing stories about being a fish out of water.
Jason Elkins (01:00:14.155)
Okay.
Jason Elkins (01:00:28.406)
Yeah. Okay. I, but, and, and you said, you said something like people getting their stories out through translation. think, I don’t know if I got the exact wording, but
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:00:30.52)
And let’s celebrate that.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:00:38.498)
Yes, because for example, for example, you read Spanish. It’s totally make you read Spanish and you could write in English. You could read a book in Spanish that’s never been translated and pitch it to a publisher and translate it into English.
Jason Elkins (01:00:41.652)
Yeah, well, very slowly.
Jason Elkins (01:00:53.292)
If, if I read a book in Spanish, that’s, I think I here’s where I’m going with this is, and it happens in just like when I have conversations with people, cause I understand probably at regular speed, I understand about 50 % of what they’re saying. So the story in my head is almost always completely different than the story they were telling me. Right. So if I read a book, I could probably go right.
a whole completely brand new novel based on my understanding of what I just read and nobody else would look at the two and say, this is the same book. It would be very original because half of it would be completely made up in my head based on what I thought I was reading that wasn’t really what I was reading. That’s an interesting concept.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:01:32.194)
And that would be an original work. That would be an original work, Jason.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:01:43.716)
know, Marquez lived in Mexico City most of his life, but he wrote these beautiful novels about sex and family drama in Colombia while living in Mexico. Like, you could write a Mexican novel. There isn’t a limit. Some people write about, because one thing, the best advice I got when I was going to write novels, so I had an agent. My first agent, he liked a piece I wrote in the New York Times about going to Haiti three months after the earthquake. Well, Haiti was like three months after the earthquake.
Jason Elkins (01:01:46.368)
Uh-huh.
Jason Elkins (01:01:52.716)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:02:13.733)
after being away for 24 years. So I 800 word pieces about visiting my old house, visiting the hospital where I was born, visiting my dad’s house, the house where I grew up in and seeing it fractured but still standing, reuniting with old friends and…
noticing that the cracks in the walls of the house meant it could come down on my head any minute now. So while we hugging, hey, Demetri, good to see you. been so long. I’m like, do we need to go outside or else we’re gonna die? So I wrote that piece. My agent read it. He’s like, dude, you should write a book about this, about what it’s like to go back to Haiti after being away for 24 years as a humanitarian. And I’m like, dude, I’m on mission now. It sucks. I’m dealing with a lot of death. I’m translating.
Jason Elkins (01:02:34.174)
Right.
Jason Elkins (01:02:40.268)
Right.
Jason Elkins (01:02:50.134)
Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:02:59.492)
in three languages, trying to raise money to help Haiti and also let the public know that we’re doing good work to help the people. It’s a contradiction. It’s not, not, it’s counterintuitive. We’re doing a good job, but please give us money.
Jason Elkins (01:03:14.506)
Yeah, we need more, right? Yeah, that would be tough.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:03:17.71)
So he checks in with me every month. And when I get back home to Geneva, this is like in, he checks in again in November, Julie, what are you thinking about book wise? I’m like, you know what, I’m gonna do a novel. I just came back and we went, we visited a friend of ours, an old friend of ours who just, her marriage just exploded and she got caught cheating. So I’m thinking about a novel about a daughter in Haiti.
after the earthquake. And he’s like, a novel? I wanted you to write a nonfiction book. I’m like, yeah, but you that’s what I’m feeling. I don’t want to write about myself. I want to write about other people. That’s why I see the funny. And he goes, all right, well, my piece of advice to you, and this is great advice, shout out to Robert, is a novel is all about your voice.
Jason Elkins (01:03:48.192)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:03:58.422)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:04:15.364)
If your voice is agreeable, pleasant, good company, you could tell reader any story and the reader will follow you for 300 pages.
Jason Elkins (01:04:27.82)
Hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:04:29.25)
You have to be pleasant. You have to be good company. And that was the magical advice that’s all I needed to hear. Because it makes sense. People write about science fiction. People write about aliens. People, Star Trek. People write about, you magicians. People write about anything if it’s agreeable on the page. If it makes you want to find out what’s next. You just keep turning pages. Keep turning pages. Keep turning pages.
Jason Elkins (01:04:58.252)
It’s interesting. So, so after hearing that advice and you look back at some of your favorite authors, did you immediately kind of see it and agree like, it was Hemingway agreeable. Like I, when I picture, yeah, I don’t know. I’ve read his books, but I’ve never.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:04:58.52)
That freedom blew my mind. Is that about your voice?
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:05:10.968)
Yeah, yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:05:15.14)
Yes, he was simple. He does short sentences, direct and percussive. So he keep going, going, even going. The writers I love the most, Jose Saramago, Portuguese, Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1983. He’ll write a sentence that’s five pages long. And did this happen? And then this happened. And then this happened. And then, wow. And then why his boss came in the room. And then, okay, they started thinking about his wife. They started thinking about
Jason Elkins (01:05:36.844)
Wow, OK.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:05:45.368)
He’s talking about the boss’s wife. And then, and then, he could do that for 10 pages. And it works. And I read that and I thought, I could do that. That was more my style. I started off thinking I could do Hemingway. Then I started doing these novels where I could do a sentence that has just five pages. Then that’s my style. It’s called maximalist. Hemingway is the classic minimalist. It’s the most attractive, simple writing.
Jason Elkins (01:06:09.388)
Both styles are agreeable, but both styles are agreeable and that makes sense because when I’m reading, I like to read a lot. And yeah, if I feel like the person telling the story is pleasant, I just assume that it just feels pleasant to me because I feel like I like the author. Like you mentioned the bookstore thing. Like if I read a book from front to end, probably the person that wrote the book is somebody that I’d want to meet in person.
Yeah, you it’s a really good point because if I pick up a book and I read 15 pages in and I’m like, I don’t like this. And then someone said, this famous author is going to be at the bookstore. I’m like, yeah, I picked up his book. I didn’t read the book. I just not going to feel connection. So that makes sense. It makes complete sense. I also remember someone saying to me or I read somewhere, it’s probably a famous quote that, you know, or maybe I don’t know if it’s a famous quote. I just remember reading somewhere that
or someone said that we read to discover we’re not alone in the world. I don’t know if that sounds familiar. I just remember that it was, that when I read it does, I just feel like, I feel seen, I feel heard. Even it’s not a book about me, but it just makes me feel like, this other character has similar thoughts and problems and struggles and.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:07:33.165)
He nailed it. He nailed it. And that’s what writers do. that’s why writers, that’s why writing, lonely as it seems, hermit-like as it seems, it’s like throwing a party.
Jason Elkins (01:07:47.276)
Mmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:07:48.035)
But I write about people who suffer and found fun in their pain somehow. And when I’m seeing this do it, I’m creating a world of people, a hero and her boyfriend and her cousin and how they’re doing. I their parents and how she’s trying to be like her mom, different from her dad, but turns out she’s more like her mom and she hates her mom, but she’s like her mom. I’m writing, I’m creating a world of people who are like me.
and like you and forgot throwing up out there in their drama and in their bad jokes and in embarrassing situations that you couldn’t relate to.
Jason Elkins (01:08:27.53)
Do does your story, I don’t know the process, but do you oftentimes feel kind of surprised by your own story? You’re writing the story and then, and then it’s like a character takes a character takes a right turn and you’re like, Ooh, I didn’t see that coming.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:08:36.311)
Completely, completely. When people read it back to me.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:08:43.329)
You never see it coming. Like, Saga God, obsessively, is about a guy who comes to America, becomes a big star in Brazil, goes back to Haiti, gets in trouble with the dictator. That’s the headline. The reality is, it’s about a kid who’s a twin and who’s very competitive and who is vain and who’s very talented. It’s about being a genius, being gifted.
and not knowing when to say no. Not knowing when, you know, enough’s enough. Maybe don’t sleep with your brother’s girlfriend.
Jason Elkins (01:09:14.892)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:09:23.859)
Maybe if you leave, maybe you come back. Maybe you don’t stay away. You don’t stay out in the party over and over again. If you promise you the love of your life and you come back, come back.
Jason Elkins (01:09:32.3)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:09:37.411)
What are the limits to genius? If you’re gifted, gifted people and writers for a lot for along those lines and musicians and artists for long was like gifted people feel entitled to hey my gift has to be expressed and as long I’m expressing your kind doing God’s bidding come doing what God gave me the ability to do which is unique fair but where are the limits? Where are the caps?
Jason Elkins (01:09:58.196)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:10:03.852)
Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:10:05.87)
How do you do it and keep a family together? How do do it and keep your spouse happy? How do you do it and become part of a community and stay part of a community, not bigger than the community? Those challenges, that’s what first, that’s what Death of a Soccer God is about. It’s about a gifted soccer player who has a God-like ego and dies.
Jason Elkins (01:10:19.382)
So is that?
Jason Elkins (01:10:22.88)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:10:29.408)
Well, yeah, because that’s I’m thinking like that’s the karma thing, right? Is why he disappeared, which is a whole other topic that I think is super interesting. But yeah, so it’s kind of like things will come back around to put you in your place or I don’t know.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:10:47.203)
Yes, karma comes back around, conscience comes back around, and love may come back around. It’s like, can you be so vain? Anyway, the 10 commandments, the number one is being too vain. And as an American, I clearly identify with that one because we are too vain. We think we live on an island. We think we’re 250 million people who live on an island and can do whatever we want elsewhere, but here we’re untouchable. When…
to whom much is given, much is expected. So instead of thinking like we’re in an island, we should be more generous, more kind, more giving. And sometimes we have a president who makes us more kind and giving to the rest of the world. Sometimes we don’t. But this paradox of wealth, the honor system that comes with wealth and privilege, is fascinating to me. And Devil’s Side of God is really about that. the twists and turns that he takes, like he goes to Brazil in
Jason Elkins (01:11:37.718)
Mm-hmm. Wow.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:11:45.111)
theory 22 football players get to Brazil, are they gonna sleep with everybody in Brazil? Or were some guys falling in love and wanna adopt a new family? Were some guys going to have sex with four women? Were some guys just staying back in the hotel listening to stories of guys who are out there doing stuff?
Jason Elkins (01:12:03.104)
working on their novel. Right.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:12:07.779)
those diverse personalities. So when you’re writing a novel, you’re not alone, because you’re putting everybody you know, and I even name characters after my friends, just as a shout out, because I’m grateful for, everybody who could have lunch with you when you stay at home novelist, everybody who could have lunch with you and hang out with you once in a while, you’re so grateful, so they all end up in my book somewhere somehow.
Jason Elkins (01:12:28.448)
Yeah, of course. I don’t, you know, one thing that popped into my head as during this conversation, and I’m not really familiar with this. think they just call them role play games. And I’m not trying to minimize or diminish or, or, or I’m just curious though, but yeah, I feel like people create these stories in their head.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:12:46.229)
Yeah, but that’s
Jason Elkins (01:12:54.654)
And with their friends, make characters and sometimes they do it as a group. I don’t know if you can do it by yourself, but it seems like maybe the same type of person that enjoys that might later on turn into a writer. What do you think? I don’t know. I have no idea.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:12:57.281)
Yes.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:13:10.498)
Shakespeare had money problems his whole career. 99 % of writers have money problems. Or family problems. And yet, the greatest literature and the greatest plays and greatest movies have been about kings and presidents. No king has ever written a play or a novel. But man, there are great novels about kings.
Jason Elkins (01:13:28.076)
yeah. that’s, that’s the quote. That’s the quote for this conversation. I love that. Yes. Okay.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:13:38.902)
There are great novels about kings. There are great novels about chiefs, about prime ministers, about royalty.
Jason Elkins (01:13:43.532)
But they’re not writing books.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:13:48.958)
Never written by a royal. Hamlet was the prince of Denmark, written a novel, a play written by a broke writer in the deep backwoods of England. There’s something about the imagination. If the writer does a good job, and if you make it convincing or charming enough, the reader believes it. But my first novel was about a president of Haiti, a 60-year-old president of Haiti. I was 40.
Jason Elkins (01:13:50.924)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:14:00.03)
Mm-hmm. Interesting.
Jason Elkins (01:14:12.438)
Hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:14:19.382)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:14:20.067)
When people get me all the time, like, wait, know, adultery and, I’m like, wait, I’m not a 22-year-old woman, which is the hero of the book. I’m not a 60-year-old man. I’m not President of Haiti. So there’s nothing about my life in here, except I know that people can be strong, people can be weak. And when they’re strong, when they’re weak is kind of unpredictable. And how people try to bring everything full circle is kind of funny.
Jason Elkins (01:14:29.26)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:14:41.217)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:14:48.502)
Hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:14:49.472)
I’m strong, I’m weak, but I’m not that weak. I’m still kind of strong. I mean, we have that push pull of our kids all the time. I’m a good dad, right? Well, sometimes that.
Jason Elkins (01:14:56.64)
have that push pull. Yeah. I have that push pull constant every day in my life, you know, going back and forth and people are people, whether they’re Kings or 20 some year old women, right? We all have. Yeah. Yeah. So
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:15:11.97)
Exactly. Yes. Yes. Every king wants to be a good man. Every emperor wants to be seen as a good man. Everybody wants virtue. Can you be good, but can you be good in a sustained way? That’s the challenge.
Jason Elkins (01:15:24.972)
And I says
Yeah, it’s going to be a tremendous amount of pressure for any, you know, I mean, you mentioned it. Every king wants to be a good man or wants to be seen as a good man. And what a tremendous amount of pressure because with all the eyes looking at you and yeah. Hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:15:47.436)
You know, I mean, and the same thing with all of us. Like, I do this by myself, but I wanna, I have a family. I want them to be proud. I have a community, I have friends, I a girlfriend and I want everybody to feel part of it. Even though it’s just me by myself making shit up. It’s not about them, but I want you to feel part of my life. I want you to show up for me, I show up for you, but I have more free time than you, so I show up a lot.
Jason Elkins (01:15:55.818)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:16:05.152)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:16:17.57)
But what I’m doing is important and it still counts, but.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:16:25.099)
It’s a balanced act. You can’t please everybody. So you have to find some middle line of like, I’m creating these things, but I’m also part of the community. And walking that tightrope, I’m isolated. The bylines are just me, but I’m part of a community. I show up for everyone I can and I hope to get paid for it. I hope people show up at the book events. When somebody says you did like the book, you’re like, shucks, you actually read it?
Jason Elkins (01:16:26.314)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:16:33.964)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:16:49.537)
Uh-huh.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:16:54.08)
I’m, you’re always going to be shocked. And I talked to the most famous guys and they’re like, yeah, every reader is like a miracle.
Jason Elkins (01:16:55.66)
You
Jason Elkins (01:17:01.736)
It’s, I get that on a smaller note. just, anytime, know, anytime I talk to somebody about the podcast and they’re like, and they mentioned they’ve heard it or they said, I listened to episodes. So-and-so with so-and-so. And I don’t know why I’m always like, I mean, I’ll be vulnerable right now. I always feel excited and surprised even though I know, I mean, I can look at the backend, I can see people are listening, you know, I, but that’s just a
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:17:24.437)
Yes!
Jason Elkins (01:17:30.636)
a chart or a graph or whatever. And what, and when someone says, I really enjoyed this episode. really love the way you got this side of that person. And I’m like, Oh, you were listening. Oh, like, Oh my God. There’s, um, that, uh, can’t remember is a guy that does a very large podcast and he, um, talks about something like, well, I, I, I hope nobody’s listening or whatever, but if you are, don’t, uh, something, I don’t, I don’t even go off on a tangent, but
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:17:32.768)
Yes, yes, yes.
Jason Elkins (01:18:00.78)
Um, this to me, to fascinating conversation. feel like we can come back and discuss so many things. I, I haven’t had a lot of authors on the show. Um, the ones that I have had have been, um, what you’re doing is obviously very internationally relevant and be super these, you know, interesting stories for, think my typical listener. But where I want to go with this is I really love your ability to communicate.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:18:11.968)
Okay.
Jason Elkins (01:18:28.98)
It’s just such a fun conversation to have with you and you’re very thoughtful and your responses are clear and it’s you’ve left me with so many fascinating little thoughts and new messages that I hadn’t heard before. So thank you so much for doing that. And I’m curious before we wrap up though, I told you early on, say we’d have a chance. I wanted to make sure we didn’t leave anything on the table. So I wanted to ask, what did I forget to ask you? What do you wish that I’d asked you?
Or what else do you want to make sure our listeners know before we wrap?
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:19:01.057)
Well, one thing I want to add is one thing that we talked about in our pre-recording conversation, which is that there’s a potential here, it’s an opportunity for all the tour organizers, all the travel agents, all the people who are your typical audience, typical listeners, your typical interviewers, and the people running business. People who are part of the travel industry. Books and movies.
about the countries, about their countries, about the country they’re traveling in to do philanthropy and to just visit are very, very important. And that should be part of their offering as travel agents. There isn’t a country that doesn’t have, the famous great American novel? Every country has a great dot, dot novel. Because most countries read novels more than they watch TV. Electricity being what it is.
Jason Elkins (01:19:51.126)
You know.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:19:57.951)
And so forth. that that every country has that. And I think your tour operators and the hotels should make these works available to their customers and their clients and to their partners. Because these things are what the tangible assets. One thing about digital assets, digital assets are amazing. Digital media is great, but there is something about life offline. So every country has museums.
Every city has a museum of natural history, of modern art. Those things should be part of people’s itineraries when they’re going to any country. And particularly the literature, because you could read the great Vietnamese novel, the great Thai novel, the great Peruvian novel. There are quite a bit of those. You could read that after or before you go on a trip. And that’s part of that country that’s with you forever.
Jason Elkins (01:20:57.3)
love that. And yeah, I remember discussing that I’m so happy you brought that back up because that was that was something I really wanted to get into and I kind of glossed over and forgot. thanks for bringing that up again. Because I know for me, in my experiences, if I’m going someplace new, and I’m excited about it, but I’m not there yet. But I’m kind of emotionally, I want to be there, I want to get there. And there’s
So for example if you’re going to Kenya or whatever and you might and you’re so excited to go to Kenya you might want to get out of Africa and read it or something like that, right or if you
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:21:31.253)
Nigeria, you read Chimamanda Adichie Ngozze’s novel called Americana. So she’s Nigerian who studied at Princeton, but writes out of Nigeria, but wrote a great novel called Americana about being an African woman trying to find a hairdresser and trying to get a pudding in America. And she goes into all the minutiae about adapting to America that is so familiar but seen from a new lens.
Jason Elkins (01:21:37.109)
Okay?
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:22:02.664)
is special. of the greatest, one of the best selling novels in the last 10 years, like in the world. So, and it’s called Americana, it was written by Nigerian.
Jason Elkins (01:22:03.564)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:22:08.641)
Yep.
Jason Elkins (01:22:12.904)
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s very cool. It’s, and it’s just a way to kind of, because I like to think that any travelers that are listening to this program are really want to create a connection. It’s not, they’re not just people seeking Instagram, opportunities or they want to, there’s so many ways to connect with a culture. So I don’t want to say anything that does connect with the culture, but my point, but yeah, yeah. So
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:22:25.173)
Yes.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:22:36.555)
There’s a lot of ways, music, film, movies, museums, but books offer a cheap way and an internally rewarding way of connecting with a culture you’re visiting or you might visit. Say a cheap way, yeah, because the books cost 20 bucks.
Jason Elkins (01:22:43.947)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:22:49.792)
Did you say a cheap? Did you say the word cheap or cheat? Okay, so there’s there’s the cheap way, but there’s also it’s kind of a cheat. I because I heard the word cheat. A cheat way is like to start that process of connecting before you get there. Because some people will watch YouTube videos and they’ll watch, you know, street food videos in Vietnam, you know, so they and that’s
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:23:06.805)
Yes.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:23:11.979)
But if you read the Taylor of Panama before going to Panama, you get to read about sex and politics in Panama. And you can’t get that in a YouTube video by Panama City. But you can get it in the Taylor of Panama, the novel.
Jason Elkins (01:23:19.157)
Yeah!
Jason Elkins (01:23:23.852)
No, you can be, because the YouTube video about Panama city most likely, and I’m not knocking any of my other content creator friends out there, but, many times I’ve watched these videos. Uh, for example, managing Columbia and I will see top 10 things to do or top three mistakes to avoid or data data. And then the person can’t even pronounce the name of the city. Right. You know, and you’re like, and,
If I didn’t know, wouldn’t know, but I know. and you know, and it’s like, okay, yeah, this is, you know, they threw it together in the course of three days, as opposed to locked in an Airbnb somewhere in Martinique, banging it out and creating characters.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:24:01.973)
Yes, yes. And the higher end readers, the higher end clients these travel operators have, they will want to find a bookstore in that city.
Jason Elkins (01:24:08.683)
Right, yeah.
Yep, That’s.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:24:14.305)
find bookstores and
Jason Elkins (01:24:17.014)
There are some, I don’t know if people are aware of this, you are obviously. I’m at least aware of the fact there are some, bookstores are really cool. When you’re out and about traveling, yeah and.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:24:26.955)
And they’re gorgeous. They’re the best photo app. There’s a bookstore in Porto, Portugal that’s so beautiful. You have to pay 10 euros to get in. And there’s a line outside.
Jason Elkins (01:24:34.892)
And they probably only started to do that to try. So many people wanted to come in that weren’t buying books. Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:24:40.896)
Because it was so popular, they’re like, OK.
You know, so, and it’s like when Instagram exploded, people discovered this bookstore that’s been around for hundred years. There’s a line outside and people pay money to go inside the bookstore. That’s like unheard of, but that exists. And many countries around the world have gorgeous bookstores.
Jason Elkins (01:24:53.761)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:25:02.454)
Yeah, and they’re not all Barnes and Noble and I’m not knocking Barnes and Noble, the important player, but it’s
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:25:08.0)
But there are mom and pop bookstores that happen to have funky architecture. And you walk in there, you smell hundreds of, should be around the history of a country.
Jason Elkins (01:25:16.236)
funky architecture, funky just cultural stuff, just the way people work in spaces.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:25:24.084)
And you ask them about, you ask the bookkeeper about the most popular books from that city, from that country. Well, this author is from here. He wrote this novel about a king and his gay lover and became a huge bestseller in 1845. And people suspect that he was gay, but he was in the closet.
Jason Elkins (01:25:47.02)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:25:51.456)
So he wrote a novel about a guy, a closet king. And that’s the lore. So whenever you see a novel, that’s the popular novel of a lower community, there’ll be a backstory to it. And the booksteller can tell you that. And suddenly you know something about that community that you won’t find on YouTube. Then you can go back to your friends and be like, hey, man, if you go to Kuala Lumpur, there’s a bookstore there. they got stories.
Jason Elkins (01:25:54.7)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:26:02.87)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:26:08.832)
Yeah, it’s,
Jason Elkins (01:26:17.088)
Yeah, yeah, that’s very cool. remember walking, I didn’t actually intend to walk into the bookstore. It was actually in a mall right after I got to Columbia several years ago, my first visit there and just walking through the mall and there was a line outside this bookstore and I was, and the woman I was with, my friend, she was very excited. She’s like, my gosh, that’s Julio, that’s Julio, he’s a cook. So it’s a cookbook that he had written, but he was in there doing a book signing and.
It was so exciting. And I was like, I had no idea who he was. So I had to go buy one of his cookbooks because I liked to cook. And there was, it wasn’t just a cookbook. He wrote stories about these different things and why these things are important in the culture and da da da da da. And it was just, it was just a cool experience for me to have that and a memory. So now bookstores are really good choice.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:26:49.994)
Yeah? Yeah?
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:27:07.84)
These are really good choices. That should be on any travel itinerary. Basically a lot of stuff that’s down on YouTube should be, people should have almost an offline version of the tour in their offering for clients. You’ve seen the online stuff, but my agency offers you the offline stuff, which will be museums, which will be bookstores, particularly for hiring clients. Because people actually read.
Jason Elkins (01:27:25.718)
Well, I would.
Jason Elkins (01:27:31.488)
Well, those are the destinations, but I think also something where I believe that maybe some tour operators missed the boat is in the pre planning, you know, in the pre trip stuff is why not have a link in there to a few books? Why not? Why not have. Yep. And not just recommended, but just like, here’s a link to where you can buy it from whichever bookseller you feel most aligned with.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:27:45.152)
Yes, recommended readings.
Jason Elkins (01:27:56.48)
But here’s the book we recommend, you know, if you like to prepare and read about and understand the culture before you get there, this would be a great choice and make it easy for them to go get it. Yeah, that’s yeah, because I do that. I mean, I do that myself quite often before I go someplace. I’ll go find what it what is the book that I, know, like you said, the great American novel, the great Kenyan novel, great Vietnamese novel, that type of thing. So.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:27:56.583)
Yes! Yes!
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:28:04.533)
Yes!
Yes.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:28:19.562)
Zimbabwe and now for the great Portuguese now for the great Norwegian. Like there’s a lot and people have even countries that you don’t associate with literature will have literature.
Jason Elkins (01:28:29.066)
Yep. I like, just recently read the Alchemist in Spanish. I’d read it. I’d read it in English quite a few times. I really connect to that book and it’s a pretty quick read in English. It’s a little slower, slower in Spanish. And we were touching earlier on the translation thing and I was like, I recognize that I’d read it quite a few times in English. And when I read it in Spanish, it was a different story. Go figure. And
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:28:35.392)
Mmmmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:28:43.04)
Great book.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:28:53.8)
Way different story. Way different story.
Jason Elkins (01:28:58.076)
you know, that could be the translators version or just my interpretation of the Spanish version. But the reason I bring that up is, you know, I’ve been wanting to go to Morocco for a while and Spain. haven’t really been to that, you know, northern Africa, the part of Spain, know, the southern Spain influenced with a lot of North African stuff and then Morocco.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:29:00.49)
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:29:19.754)
Yeah, Tangier, yeah, it’s a different world.
Jason Elkins (01:29:22.972)
And that book’s not necessarily all, it’s not a travel guide. It’s not going to help you prepare for your trip, but it’s just maybe a good, quick, easy read example of something you might want to read if you’re going to that place. Yeah, please do.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:29:33.472)
I got a recommendation for you. The more is the mint.
Jason Elkins (01:29:38.54)
The Moors Lament. Okay.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:29:40.928)
Yes, that’s a novel about Spain and the Moors, which are the people from Morocco and Algeria, who ran Spain for 600 years. And it’s a great window into that world, into the history of that world. And the beauty about that history is it’s very present when you go to that world.
Jason Elkins (01:29:49.334)
Uh-huh.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, very, cool.
Jason Elkins (01:30:02.496)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:30:03.732)
you know, when you you have that word is still present like, wow, okay. The architecture and all that.
Jason Elkins (01:30:08.396)
There’s so many cool places. Here’s the thing. There’s too many cool places to go see and to fully absorb and connect with. But we can take a shot at connecting with a lot more of them by reading. I will say that. Right?
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:30:30.621)
Yes. There are many ways to connect to society. You you date locally, you cook and you shop locally. But you read, you get to the soul of a country quicker.
Jason Elkins (01:30:43.488)
Well, I’m and I’m saying, I’m saying not everybody has the ability, physical, financial, whatever ability to go hang out in Morocco to go to the markets and try the spices and do all this stuff. But most people have the ability to either pick up a book and read or listen to it. If they can’t read, they can’t see it. They can listen to it and you could
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:31:09.855)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:31:13.226)
You could sit in your apartment in Brooklyn and, wherever in the world and really learn a lot about culture and, and, different societies and without ever leaving just because you can. Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:31:24.511)
Yes, there’s sense of humor there. And also it cuts across literature, cuts across generations. know, those five people, you know, in the class of 30, in most families, it’s like five people. There’s like a grandmother who read obsessively. So when you read, like my dad read obsessively. So I read obsessively. So when I’m talking to my cousins and relatives, like, yeah, your dad, man.
Jason Elkins (01:31:31.508)
Hmm? Hmm?
Jason Elkins (01:31:41.344)
Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:31:53.811)
He wrote so much. And I got stories about the family, because my dad knew the stories, told me the stories. And I got stories about our family. And my family’s like, damn, we didn’t know that. Well, that’s why you have writers in the family. That’s why I readers in the family, because they actually read and remember stuff. Which leads me to one thing, Jay, before we go. Sounds to me like you got a book to write.
Jason Elkins (01:32:03.105)
Yeah.
you
Jason Elkins (01:32:10.486)
Very, very, yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:32:17.024)
I, I’m thinking the same thing. I’m actually, this conversation has been really, really interesting. And I have found myself over the last few years spending so much time, you know, analyzing like, why have I made the choices I’ve made and what is my purpose and, and, what was behind this and behind that. And frankly, a lot of it’s cause I’ve been, I’m going to say I’ve been locked in an Airbnb for four and a half years, not always by myself. I want to put that out there.
But it’s, yeah, yeah, it’s.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:32:49.417)
That’s one reason I’m happy being back in my hometown is I left probably, I met my wife in 2000. So basically for 25 years, I’ve been, I was married to a European. So for 25 years, I’ve lived outside of the U.S. Because even when we were in the U.S., we have a house that’s like half Haitian, and so we always had like, we’re always traveling. I was always on the run. So when I came back here in September,
Jason Elkins (01:33:07.094)
Yeah. Do you like?
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:33:19.039)
I was like, oh, I’m now on the run anymore. I’m here. So when I’m dating, it’s like, no, no, I’m here. I’m not passing through. And suddenly I’m like, oh my God, I was so unreliable before because I was so passing through. I could talk or to talk, but I was just passing through. I’m in Airbnb. I’m not going be in your country that long. But you’re amazing. Let’s hang out. But I’m not going to be here that long. But now I’m going to be here. So now I’m like truer and more sincere and more myself because of that.
Jason Elkins (01:33:19.508)
I can relate. I can relate. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:33:36.683)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:33:49.11)
Here’s, I don’t know if this resonates with you, but my process was when I decided, okay, I’m gonna go travel. I got rid of everything. I went the minimalist thing. Everything I own is in one suitcase and then I’ve got a little backpack I carry my computer around in. And so it’s like, okay, so I got rid of all this stuff and you were talking earlier about the things you leave behind, the things you let go of. And so it both, it’s…
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:34:04.671)
I’m there.
Jason Elkins (01:34:16.62)
Literally, metaphorically, physically, whatever, I left a lot of stuff behind. I didn’t leave my family behind in the sense my relationship with my son’s amazing. I I talk to him about every day on a video call. I talk to my mom once a week on a video call. So I didn’t leave the relationships behind, but I left a lot of stuff behind. So then you go travel for a while and you figure out, what’s important? Like when I, I don’t buy anything, and this is not about spending money. This is, don’t buy anything unless,
I value it enough to carry it. You know, and so there’s, that’s the literal thing. If it fits in my suitcase, I maybe I have to get rid of something else to make it fit, but the same thing happens with relationships, habits, thought processes, it’s constant evaluation. Okay. What can I, what should I continue to carry with me or what should I let go? And then someday when I end up back in the States or I end up staying somewhere,
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:34:47.857)
Yes! Amen!
Jason Elkins (01:35:15.084)
then I can realize, now I kind of know what’s important, what I really need, I want to have in my life, and then add, and maybe add some things back in because I don’t have to physically carry them anymore, but just with a different perspective on kind of what’s important. Does that resonate?
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:35:33.087)
Yes. It totally makes sense. Totally makes sense. I’ve lived out of backpacks for quite a bit. Probably the last six years. My kids got old enough. I’m okay with that. know, me and my ex-wife, we’re very cool. She’s a great woman. I’m happy being in my continent, and I’m happy being able to, but I’m happy also because half my life is my kids. So half my life is in Europe. So I’m here, but another half of me is in Europe.
Jason Elkins (01:35:38.443)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:35:56.32)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:36:01.58)
Mm-hmm.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:36:01.891)
My daughter has a job interview tomorrow morning. I’m waking up at 3 in the morning to wake her up. Her interview is at 4 in the morning, which is 10 o’clock Paris time. I’m to be safe. like, you awake?
Jason Elkins (01:36:06.284)
you
Jason Elkins (01:36:12.652)
We’re always parents. We’re always parents, aren’t we?
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:36:15.007)
we’re always parents and that keeps me grounded and that keeps me connected wherever I am. But living out of a backpack, I’ve done that for a long time and I’m growing into selling them, growing into my roots now. And I’m discovering, this is who I’ve become. think your travels, because you carried around the same backpack, the same suitcase with the same X amount of things.
and the same hobbies to make yourself feel at home in a foreign place. Those hobbies become you. So my routines in foreign countries was Catholic Church on Sundays, bookstores, museums, speech. Know what? My routines, wherever I am now, there’s a Catholic Church near me, there’s a bookstore I pop in, just to pop in, this is Feel the Air, and this is New York City. This is every five, two blocks. And then the body.
Jason Elkins (01:36:46.07)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:37:11.347)
huh, huh.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:37:13.215)
water, I like to go walk by, you know, I mean, usually it’s on Wall Street, a seaport, I love going to the seaport. Like, those routines happen everywhere you go, but they have been hardened and become part of my DNA over the course of me using them in my travels to give me a sense of home.
Jason Elkins (01:37:33.312)
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, fascinating. I suspect that what, I get it, I say when I get to the point of not traveling and living out of a backpack, I suspect that my life before traveling, I had traveled quite a bit, but for work trips and stuff, but I had an apartment back in Phoenix and I can picture exactly what it was like. And I suspect that when I sign a lease on someplace or buy a place at some point in the future, it’s going to look very different.
Just my life is going be very different. So like, for example, I never used to go eat a croissant and drink a coffee in the morning when I lived in Phoenix. But I’ve done it an awful lot in the last several years and wherever I live, there’s going to have to be a little panaderia or a pastry shop or pâtisserie or whatever, where I can go sit down with a coffee and eat a ham and cheese croissant in the morning. Like it’s just going to be part of my life forever now. And that was never ever important.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:38:01.669)
Very different.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:38:10.313)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:38:28.967)
And you will never be as materialistic as you were before you started traveling. Because objects are just objects.
Jason Elkins (01:38:31.964)
yeah, because it’s, it’s going to carry over. Yeah. And stuff doesn’t mean anything really. mean, it has to bring me a tremendous amount of joy for me to carry it around and very few physical things give me that much joy. Like I would, yeah, I would just much rather pay. Now, but like you mentioned, you know, passing through and, and being, you know, relation, sometimes you meet people and
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:38:50.206)
cars, furniture,
Jason Elkins (01:39:00.66)
You know, like I’m a single guy and I meet women and like, where do you live? Well, that’s really complicated. How long will you be here? How long will you, you know, do you have a car? Do you, do you have family here with you? Why are you here by yourself? There’s those questions can be kind of, kind of, they think you’re crazy.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:39:17.182)
those questions become recurring and you’re like, I stand for these things. I have these hobbies, I have these passions. Do you share them? Let’s enjoy them.
Jason Elkins (01:39:27.2)
Yeah, I asked someone recently, I’m just going to say online, virtually I asked this person a question and I said, if you could go anywhere in the world, if you could go anywhere in the world for one month, where would you go? And you know, her response, and I respect her response, her response was, it’s impossible. I have to work. And I’m like, okay, I like, I get the response in a sense.
But I said, if you could go anywhere, I wasn’t inviting her. wasn’t, didn’t, had like, I had, this was like our very first like back and forth, but it was if you could go anywhere. And she wasn’t even creative enough to say, if I could go anywhere, it would be Switzerland or if I could go anywhere, it would be Nigeria or whatever. Yeah. And like, like if she had said, I would love to go to wherever. Unfortunately right now I’ve got to figure out something with my works, my work.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:39:58.344)
I know. I know.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:40:10.428)
If you don’t have those things in common, it’s tough.
Jason Elkins (01:40:21.822)
situation because I don’t have a lot of time off. But if I could go, I would go. Then I’d be like, OK, well, maybe we could have a conversation. But if if your first response is, yeah, that’s impossible. It’s just like if anybody starts the conversation with it’s impossible. I’m like, OK, you’re you’re probably going to get really frustrated with me because I’m always in like, where would I go? Yeah, yeah, if you ask.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:40:36.051)
Yeah, there’s not much room to grow from there.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:40:42.114)
Yes, yes, I get it. I get the same way I get the same way if you don’t like books, you don’t like book events What are you doing?
Jason Elkins (01:40:52.028)
what’s your favorite book and you, and, and she’s like, well, I’m too busy to read. don’t really read then. Yeah. Okay. Well, I’m going to bore the shit out of you. You’re going to bore the shit out of me. So let’s, let’s save each other some time and energy, but anyway.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:41:03.976)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that’s the thing, we define who we are the more we rule and we have to be true to those values. What I’ve learned to do is to be sincere about them and not waste anybody’s time.
Jason Elkins (01:41:11.84)
Yep, absolutely.
Yeah, and it’s hard because, yeah, that can be hard because sometimes you question yourself. If 90 % of the people I interact with, I tell them this is my life and they respond with, it sounds like you’re homeless. Are you homeless? Like, well, kind of. I’ll share this quick story just real quick. I was back visiting my son and my mom in Arizona.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:41:33.042)
I get that. Then you out kind of.
Jason Elkins (01:41:44.204)
And he was probably, I don’t know, 16 or something like that. And there was like a parent teacher like visit, like before school, like orientation day. And they invite the kids to come in with their families, meet the teachers. And so I, my, myself and his mom, my ex-wife, um, accompanied him to this school event. And one of the teachers, um, said, Oh, and what, you know, she knew we were divorced or that came up somehow.
And then she looked at me and says, so where do you live? And I said, I’m homeless. My poor son went into immediate. He looked at me immediately. He said, dad, you have to explain, explain, explain. And I’m like, I mean, I’m a digital nomad. And Jackson’s like, dad, why did you tell her you’re homeless? my gosh, he was so embarrassed. And not that it’s a bad thing necessarily, but anyway, I can appreciate that he.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:42:28.542)
That is funny. That is funny.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:42:40.798)
This is funny because you’re in full no man mode and I’m rebelling in being an American living in America for the first time in 25 years. I’m like, oh, this is nice. When people ask me where I’m from, I’m like, you know what, my high school’s down the street. And so I’m experiencing the reverse of that, but I totally get it.
Jason Elkins (01:42:41.6)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I
Jason Elkins (01:42:55.638)
Yeah, that’ll be a shift.
Well, right now, unfortunately, when I am back in the States, if I run into somebody interesting or if somebody says, where do you live or where are from or whatever, it kind of comes back around to, well, I’m staying at my mom’s house right now, which is probably worse than being in Columbia and saying you’re a nomad and living in an Airbnb. If you’re in the States and you say, I’m a nomad staying at my mom’s house, they’re like,
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:43:15.707)
Hmm hmm
Jason Elkins (01:43:27.688)
You’ve got no points. You got nothing going for you when you say that. Demetri, this has been so much fun. I actually, yeah, I think we’re doing the croissant or bagels. Do you like bagels? You gotta like bagels. You’re in New York, right? I love bagels. Okay, so I’m gonna come to New York. We’re gonna do bagels with lox and all that good stuff and a coffee. So I look forward to it.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:43:35.262)
That is funny. This is great. Jason, you better stay in touch,
And if you come to New York City, let me know.
I like bagels. Yeah, My girlfriend makes amazing bagels.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:43:54.288)
Yes, yes, yes, with great pleasure. Same here, man.
Jason Elkins (01:43:57.43)
Demetri, thank you so much. appreciate you. This was a lot of fun. Can’t wait. Can’t wait to read your book. That’s going to be super. It’s going to be super cool. I’m I think, yeah, I think she sent me a link and I didn’t want to kind of ruin it by learning too much about you at a time because if you can’t tell I’m kind of a spontaneous guy. I like surprises. So, but it’s us. But now it’s time to go read it.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:44:02.482)
Well, you received a copy from Tracy, right?
Okay.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:44:11.388)
Okay. Okay.
Fair, fair, Well, I think you like soccer god because it is about moving around the planet and making new friends.
Jason Elkins (01:44:24.182)
You know, and that you called it disappeared by the corrupt government. Yeah, that’s a big thing in Latin America that I don’t know if I’m eight, probably not just in Latin America, but it’s not something really on our radar.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:44:29.0)
Dictator.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:44:32.859)
Yeah.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:44:36.38)
The word over, ISIS is disappearing people in America. Dictators do that. Dictators disappear people.
Jason Elkins (01:44:39.336)
Yeah, yeah, they do. Yeah, and it’s something I didn’t think about a lot before I really started traveling. But you know, Mexico City, anywhere in Mexico, Colombia, most of these places I’ve been, there’s a there’s a park I remember in Buenos Aires back before I was traveling full time, I went there and they’ve got, you know, these these women that hang out in the park and they’ve got pictures of their family members that disappeared a long time ago, some of them and some of more recently. And
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:44:51.954)
Yeah. See there.
Jason Elkins (01:45:07.82)
It’s a big thing and I bet there’s a lot of story opportunities there, which is kind of what you’ve done with Death of a Soccer God is, you know, what happened to these people? if, yeah, I think it’s pretty cool. So, all right, I’ll let you get back to what you’re doing. Demetri, thank you so much. Let’s do it again real soon. All right, thanks, bye-bye.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:45:12.552)
Yes, yes.
Yeah. Giving voice to the voiceless, giving voice to the disappeared.
Dimitry Elias Leger (01:45:28.862)
See you here. See you here. Cheers. Bye bye.
Follow 205+ Leaders and the Stories That Shape the Adventure Travel World on the Big World Made Small Podcast
Access the stories here, or on your favorite platform; wherever you prefer.
Get Expert Interviews Delivered Directly to Your Inbox
Join the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast community and we’ll send you new podcast episodes weekly, and make sure you hear about exclusive and relevant opportunities that you won’t find elsewhere.